Poetry Translation In The Postcolonial Context

This thesis studies the poetry translation, mainly C-E (from Chinese to English) classical poetry translation, including modern metrical poems by Chairman Mao Zedong, in present postcolonial context.Postcolonialism is a term newly prevalent in the late eightieth of the twentieth century, which is also called "cultural colonialism". It mainly studies the cultural relationship between the colonizing countries and colonized countries after the colonial period, which reveals that the imperial countries are exerting another kind of imperialism upon the former colonized countries, and the third world after the colonial period through substitution of culture filtration for the former military conquest. The imperial countries imposed their value and thought system upon the former colonized and the third world countries through encoding them into their culture and then exported them forcibly to these countries in the process of cultural communication, with the ambition of getting these countries still submitted to them in politics, economy, and all the other social respects, the essence of which is "cultural hegemony". Postcolonialists point out deconstructing the western culture hegemony and building a multicultural internationalenvironment, based on coexistence, and equal dialogue and mutual compliment between the eastern and the western culture.In this situation, the author holds that China, as a country of the third world, once semi-colonized by the imperial countries, should never let the past history back again. She should demonstrate her glorious traditional cultural heritage to the world, and get the world to understand and appreciate the Chinese culture, with the purpose of contributing to the deconstruction of the western cultural hegemony and the realization of cultural diversity in the world.Poetry, as a beautiful and the most ancient form of literature, condensed vast splendid traditional Chinese culture in it. Successful translation of the Chinese poetry to the world would contribute to the deconstruction of the western cultural hegemony. However, the English versions of the Chinese poems in the western countries were mostly done by the westerners, most of which greatly distorted the Chinese poems to meet the translators' special needs or to cater to the western readers' tastes or due to the translators' lack of proper knowledge about the Chinese poems. Thus, the Chinese translators' participation in the C-E poetry translation practice is very urgent in present postcolonial context.Through comparison and analysis, the author points out that Mr. Xu Yuanchong's translation principle is the best method for the translation of the Chinese poetry to the world in present postcolonial context, because it emphasizes the re-creation of "beauty": the harmonic conveyance of the "triple beauty" in sense, sound and form to the target language in translation,which meets the requirements of the introduction of the Chinese poetry to the world in present postcolonial context, for only beautiful things can easily be accepted by the world and contribute to the deconstruction of the western cultural hegemony. Besides, to achieve that, he put forward a list of unique concepts and concrete methods to guide how to transfer the whole beauty of the Chinese poetry to English, such as the theory of "advantage" and "'competition", and specific methods of "compensation", "triple sublimation" and "re-creation", which make his translation theory more feasible than the methods and principles raised by the other Chinese translators in the Chinese translation history. Thus, Mr. Xu Yuanchong's translation theory is the most proper method for the C-E classical poetry translation in present postcolonial context. In general, Mr. Xu Yuanchong made great contributions to the introduction of the Chinese poetry to the world, no matter in quality, quantity or range.Meanwhile, in the last part, the author pointes out several other respects worth noticing in the translation of the Chinese poetry to the world in present postcolonial context such as footnoting, the preservation of typical Chinese images, and the adoption of foreignization method to retain as much Chinese culture as possible in the target language to get the world to know more about the Chinese culture to aid to the deconstruction of the western cultural hegemony.Finally, the author suggests further research on more successful ways for the translation of the Chinese poetry to the world through the cooperation between the east and the west, based on equal dialogue.