Xu Yuanchong's Search For Emotional Conveyance In His Translation Of The Song-Ci

Ci poetry came into being in the Tang Dynasty and the time of the Five Dynasties as a new genre of poetry. Ci poetry can be sung. It attained its full florescence in the Song Dynasty, and constitutes one of the chief glories of Chinese classical poetry. It holds a significant position in Chinese and world poetry. Therefore, the translation of the Song-Ci becomes a very important medium for the spreading of Chinese culture and the communication between Oriental and Occidental civilizations. Ci is lyric poetry. No feeling, there is no ci poetry. Therefore, translating the Song-Ci requires not only to convey the beauty in sound, form and meaning, but also to reproduce the feeling or emotion contained in the original. Using communicative and socio-semiotic approaches to study translation, Eugene A. Nida, a famous American translation theorist, put forward his well-known principle of "dynamic equivalence" (or functional equivalence), which explains translation as "reproducing the closest natural equivalent of the source-language message" and stresses that the relationship between translated text receptor and message should be substantially the same as that which existed between the original receptors and the message. According to this principle, the translation of the Song-Ci demands not only "attaining fidelity", but also "reproducing beauty", i.e. its profound feeling as well as its emotional expression. Xu Yuanchong's English versions of the Song-Ci prove that his renditions not only possess the equivalent artistic values and aesthetic effects, i.e. three beauties, as in the original, but also faithfully transmit the lyrical quality of the Song-Ci. Thus it can be seen that the theory of "FE", except for its function of guiding practice, also helps us understand and appreciate the practice of translation. Meanwhile, it contributes greatly to China's translation theory.