Cultural Context And Literary Equivalence Translation

Chinese Classical poetry is the treasure of Chinese literature. It is good at its implicitness, briefness and delicacy. Its description was based on a series of certain, specific context. This description can stimulate people's faculty and create an animate image. For example: the color of sunset, the flavor of flower and grass, etc. This elaborate detailed description in poetry is called image. It is a kind of thinking, a way of bourn and a method of realization of the poet's emotion.In literature, image is the basis element in poetry: from the surface, poetry is the connection of words;from the art of conceptive processing, it is the formation of image;from the angle of aesthetics, image is the smallest aesthetic unit in poetry. Images in poem construct a wholesome effect, which is imagism by different ways of combination. Therefore, Arther Welly, an oriental authority, said that "image is the spirit of poem". Ming dynasty, Hu Yinglin also said that "the essence of the ancient poem lies in the image". In some sense, poem is image. Hence, in terms of translation, poetry translation is the imagery translation. By the nature and feature of image, imagery translation should start from a common theories and translation esthetics so that it can reach an ideal effect.This dissertation begins with the concept of context. In the first part, it generally introduces the main content and purpose of writing. In the second part, it discusses the concept of context and its functions and effects on translation;then it introduces the concept of context of culture and its irreplaceable role in translation. In the third part, the paper focuses on the analysis of the concept of image in Chinese Classical Poetry and its features. Because of the cultural and the differences in language forms, poetry translation and conveyances of imagery must encounter some untranslatable factors which results in the difficulties of imagery realization. It mainly embodies in the cultural differences and the unique esthetic features in Chinese Classical Poetry.Although there really are some untranslatable factors, it can not be neglected to the communication and mutual influence between foreign and Chinese poetry, especially the boom of poetry translation in the early 20~th . Therefore, the reason why generally poem is translatable discussed in the fourth part which expounds the imagery translation in detail. The paper affirms the common semantic concept features of all the languages and explains that translation is the process of pursuit of the closest resemblances to the source text, and absolute equivalence is nonexistent. Then, it continues the development and meaning of Nida's functional equivalence theory, and combines with the viewpoint of cognitive metaphor theory to study deeply on equivalent translation theory. By using examples of translations of Chinese poetry to discuss the application of this theory to the imagery translation in Chinese Classical Poetry. Due to the aesthetic concept of image, this dissertation continues its discussion from the angle of aesthetics translation. The author put forward with the imagery conversion process in poetrytranslation. In this process, imagery conversion is based on the translator's whole feeling of the source text and then applied it to the creation of target text. This whole feeling is produced from the understanding of the ancient poet's cultural and living background reflected on thoughts. This paper analyses the semantic and aesthetic equivalent basis of translating poetry and derive that the accordant thought of the poet and the translator is the basis of translation. The way of semantic conformity on the bases of imagery is to further the understanding and explanation of translation equivalence theory. Therefore, it advances the equivalence theory on the theoretical level.To sum up, image is the theme base of poetry. Imagery translation can help the naturalness and harmony in translating poetry structure. It also means effective conveyances of the whole aesthetical experience. With the development of cultural communication of the world, poetry images from different cultural backgrounds can be understood and appreciated easier by foreign readers. Only if its sense and aesthetics are congruence in translation process, the translation can be truly achieved and successful.