Imagery In Chinese Classical Poetry And Its Translation

Chinese classical poetry is the gem of Chinese literature, particularly noted for its simplicity, subtleness and its rich connotation. Chinese poetry works it magic by the way it uses words to evoke "images" that convey a lot of meaning once you look into them. "Image" in poetry refers to the words or the language a writer uses to convey a concrete mental impression, creating a "picture" in the reader's imagination, or sensory in other ways.From literary point of view, an "image" is the basic element of a poem, while from aesthetic point of view, an image is the smallest unit of aesthetic appreciation. Therefore, Arthur Waley said that imagery is the soul of poetry. To some extent, poetry is imagery. Therefore, translating poetry is, largely, translating imagery.The thesis begins with a brief review of the statements made by Chinese and western critics and gives a detailed illustration of the concept of imagery. In view of the aesthetic value of imagery in Chinese poetry, the thesis also elucidates the relationship between imagery, artistic conception and artistic style of a poet, which offers further verification of the significance of imagery in poetry.In the second part, the thesis first classifies images into two broad categories -literal images and figurative images. Then it introduces three important ways of combining images in Chinese poetry, namely, superposition, assemblage and juxtaposition, which contribute a lot to bringing artistic atmosphere to the whole poem. The unique way of combining images also contributes to the unique aesthetic feature of Chinese poetry. The thesis mainly deals with it in the following aspects: beauty of film-making, beauty of painting, beauty of music, stereoscopic beauty and beauty of reserved imagery.Since the differences in language and culture do exist, some untranslatable elements occur in the process of translation. The third part of the thesis introduces some problems in imagery rendition.Despite all those problems and difficulties, it should not be ignored that mutual communications and influence between the two languages have never stopped, especially in the 20th century translation of poetry between the two languages increased greatly both in quantity and quality. Therefore, generally speaking, poetry is susceptible of translation. In the fourth part, the thesis gives a detailed illustration of the translation of imagery. Before probing into the question, the thesis proceeds with the nature and definition of translation, revealing the characteristic of language universality and illustrating that there is no complete or absolute translation. The thesis goes on to discuss the development of equivalent theories and gives a particular introduction to the application of equivalent theories in imagery rendition. Besides, the thesis holds that aesthetics is a necessary aspect of translation, the vision of which should be taken throughout the whole process of translation. In this part, the concept of image-gestalt, the process of image transference and translator's subjectivity are involved.Imagery is the central characteristic of poetry. The success of rendering imagery contributes to the harmonious effect of the translated poem. With the process of globalization, imagery in different cultural backgrounds finds an easier access to foreign readers. Therefore, translation of poetry between languages is possible and achievable. So long as the content and the beauty of the original poem constitute a unified entity in the translated work and a harmonious effect is achieved, the translation is successful.