A Study Of Wai-lim Yip's Chinese-English Poetry Translation

Wai-lim Yip enjoys, at home and abroad, a very high reputation as an expert in China-west Comparative Literature as well as a renowned poet, and he has also achieved prominently in translation practice and theory.In order to "bridge between Chinese and western cultures" and "coordinate the two cultural systems", Wai-lim Yip aims at seeking the common grounds of aesthetics and poetics and recognizing the convergence and divergence between Chinese and western cultures. Practically and theoretically, translation provides him with fundamental access to his achievement of this goal.Wai-lim Yip's translation covers various literary forms including not only poetry but also fictional works in several languages including Chinese, English and French, among which his translation of classical and modern Chinese poetry costs most of his deliberation. Also, Wai-lim Yip's translation theory is a systematical one with exposal of the nature of translation at the level of culture, as well as a great deal of practical instructiveness.For various reasons, Wai-lim Yip's translation practice and theory has not received recognition and systematical study that it deserves. His translation practice and theory is indeed worthy of study for his unique bilingual and bicultural identity at the junction of Chinese and western cultures. In addition, according to Wai-lim Yip's Chinese-English poetry Translation, it is obvious that his translation is unique in linguistic strategies and translation skills, and his translation theory is also distinctive while compared with translation theory of China and the west.Since Wai-lim Yip's translation practice and theory deserves more recognition and study, this dissertation makes a full analysis of his translation of classical and modern Chinese poetry as the representative part at the level of characters, phrases, sentences and passages. It collects and summarizes Wai-lim Yip's concepts scattering in his works on Comparative Literature to exhibit the system of his translation theory, and analyses certain factors such as his unique bicultural background, bilingual ability and so on to explore the establishment and diachronic development of his translation theory and consequently the tight relationship...