Xu Zhimo: A Poet Translator

Xu Zhimo was an advocate of Chinese new style poetry and made great effort in translating English poetry into vernacular Chinese in the early 20th century. As an excellent poet,his literary achievements has received a great deal attention and favorable comments. However, his role as a translator has long been ignored, which forms a sharp contrast to his literary fame. Worse still, the relatively few studies on his translation activity all seem to focus on uncovering their variously called"demerits"of his translation works, yet overlook the specific social and cultural background of Xu's time and his identity as a poet translator.In response to the above mentioned situation, this thesis attempts to make an analytical description of Xu Zhimo's translation activity in the early 20th century and examine the features of his poetry translation through a case study of his translation of Thomas Hardy's two poems. The author of this thesis tries to give a relatively fair evaluation of Xu Zhimo's poetry translation and it is hoped that this study will help us to better understand the nature of poetry translation and the inter-relationship between poet translator and successful poetry translation.This paper consists of five chapters. Chapter One introduces research objective, significance of the research and methodology. Chapter Two is composed of four parts: a brief survey on the history of English poetry translation into Chinese; a discussion on the English poetry translation theory developed in the early 20th century in China; a summary of the characteristics of poetry translation in that period; and an analysis on the role a poet translator plays in poetry translation. In Chapter Three, the author of the thesis gives a survey of Xu Zhimo's translation activity and analyzes the interaction between his creation and his poetry translation. In Chapter Four, the features of Xu Zhimo's translation of Hardy's two poems are discussed, with particular emphasis on the form, the diction, and the rhetorical devices adopted in his poetry translation. In Chapter Five, the author first gives a summary of the whole thesis, and then points out the limitations of this research.