Cultural Trap: On The Translation Of Classical Chinese Poems Into English

As is known to all poetry is one of the most, if not the most, shining pearls on the crown of literature. Acting roles not only as the symbols of beauty and thoughts but also as messenger of different cultures, poetry should, as is also possible, be shared by all those who have a taste for them. So, translation of poetry becomes obviously important when the very lofty goal of promoting intercultural communication is taken into account. To our delight, the work in this field, theories and practice alike, has been attracting increasing attention.But as far as poetry translation, especially in China, is concerned, the prolonged and heated debates are always focused on their "form and content", which, of course, is also regarded as the top dilemma in all translating activities. In fact, classical Chinese poetry are noted for their conciseness and succinctness, and, still, embedded in the conciseness and succinctness are a variety of cultural elements such as geography, social customs, folkways, architecture, religion and food, etc, which, at least part of which, are considered to be unique to Chinese culture, that is to say, these cultural elements are tinged with something which can be tentatively called "Chineseness". This so-called "Chineseness", in the eyes of non-original readers, takes on a look of "cultural otherness". Then the questions arise: Can the seed of "Chineseness" be transplanted in the soil of other cultures? Is it likely for a poem to produce equivalent effect on the target language readers? And in the final analysis, can the beauty of classical Chinese poetry, which is sometimes obvious to the original readers, be appreciated, accepted by the target language readers, or even integrated into their own culture?By grounding the analysis on the theories of cross-cultural communication and communicative translation, this thesis attempts to examine the above-mentioned questions in a careful and detailed way. While making use of western theories to back up the discussions, the author always bears in mind that the practice of translating Chinese poems into other languages is quite different from that of translating poems...