Translatability And Untranslatability Of Classical Chinese Poetry

The translation of poetry is a long disputed issue. Some linguists, poets or even translators hold that the poetry cannot be translated or even should not be translated. On the other hand, quite a few translators endeavored to translate poems and quantities of poems were successfully translated into many languages. In this thesis, the attention is focused on translatability and untranslatability of Classical Chinese Poetry (CCP).The thesis advocates that CCP is translatable. The thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter is the introduction. In this part, it offers a brief introduction and explains the reasons why the topic is chosen. The second chapter discusses the principles and criteria for the translation in general and concludes that Liu Chongde's "Faithfulness, Expressiveness and Closeness" is the principle and criterion guiding the translation of CCP. The third chapter deals with the paradox of translatability and untranslatability. It draws the conclusion that CCP is translatable although there are certain difficulties in the translation process. Thus translatability refers to the degree of translation. As the time goes by, the degree of translatability may become higher. The fourth and fifth chapters respectively expound the translatability of imagery and literary style of CCP with several examples. Some methods are also recommended to deal with imagery or literary style during the translation process.