A Comparative Study On The English Transaltions Of Mao Zedong's Poetry

As a political giant in Chinese history, Mao Zedong is an accomplished poet as well. His poems are cherished as a gleaming gem in Chinese contemporary literature. They are also an inspiring part of world civilization. His poems not only inherit merits of Chinese classical poetry, but also greatly develop it in the poet's own way. Mao Zedong's poetry was generated in a special historic period against a special social background. From the revolution leader to a state leader, Mao Zedong's political life experience provides his literary creation with an affluent and incessant source. His literary productions portray and embody Chinese revolution from a literary perspective. Systematic translation work on Mao's poetry began early in 1958. Up till now, Mao's poetry has been translated into many kinds of foreign languages in many versions, and read and appreciated all over the world. The unceasingly development of the study on Mao's poetry reflects the cherishment and great attention paid by academic and translation field, and in return it has put forward higher requirement for poetry translation.This thesis dwells on a comparative study on several English translated versions of Mao Zedong's poetry. It makes use for reference of 'Three Beauty' principle, initiated by Mr. Xu Yuanchun as the main theoretical basis to compare and analysis the different English versions of Mao Zedong's poems. After a comprehensive feature analysis on Mao's poetic content, style, language, form and his personal philosophy embodied in the poems, the thesis mainly emphasizes on how the poetic style, poetic flavor, imagery and culture conception of Mao's Chinese original are preserved and refreshed in the English translated versions especially when the translators balance the manipulation on the dynamic equivalence and resemblance between the original and the translated piece from three aspects—sense, sound and form. There are altogether 5 chapters with the focus on the analytical comparison. Some typical pieces with their different translated versions which were completed by some well-known scholars and translators both home and abroad are quoted here to exemplify the comparison. The ultimate aim lies in exploiting a relatively satisfactory way for the better representation of Mao's poems and Chinese classical poetry so that it can maximally reproduce the original beauty that is so peculiarly unique to Chinese rhymed verse, and furthermore eliciting some reflections on poetry translation and translation study.