Difficulties In Translating Classical Chinese Poetry Into English And Proposed Compensation Means

This paper applies Professor Gu Zhengkun's principle of"Optimal Approximation"to the translation of classical Chinese poetry into English and proposes the proper compensation means.It is difficult but possible to translate classical Chinese poetry into English. Its difficulties arise from facts that the style of the original poem may have a strong idiosyncratic color, which is hard to represent sufficiently in the version; classical Chinese poetry always uses many images and allusions belonging to the cultural idiosyncrasy, which is hard or even impossible to be transplanted into another language; Chinese and English poems have different metrical schemes or rhymes, which is almost impossible to translate; for the grammatical aspects, Chinese stresses the parataxis, while English emphasizes the hypotaxis, so if no compensation means are applied, it is hard to make the version idiomatic. Due to the cultural and linguistic contrasts between these two languages, some hold that poetry is untranslatable. But others hold that all human beings are endowed by nature with the same mind which has the same function so that they can commune with one and another. Besides, the poems written by the well-known poets in the world have been translated into various languages down through the history and a great number of them well-done. So poetry is translatable. Which one is convincible? It is hard to tell.Based on his study and review of the poetic translation principles in the history, Professor Gu Zhengkun believes that the translation principles proposed by the former theorists and translators are all partially applicable. Due to the complexity of the poetic translation, an absolute standard is impossible to cover all the issues related. So Professor Gu puts forward the multi-standard complementary theory and the principle of optimal approximation.This paper identifies and analyzes the difficulties in translating classical Chinese poetry into English. From the perspective of style, the strong idiosyncrasy of the poet and the translator's insufficient understanding of the original construct barriers for translation; from the perspective of image and allusion, different associations arising from the same image and the phenomenonof cultural default arising from the allusions construct barriers for translation; from the perspective of rhyme, the sharp discrepancy between these two phonetic system makes it unable to translate; from the perspective of linguistic features, the contrasts on parataxis and hypotaxis make the proper addition and omission indispensable for an expressive representation.Then, this paper proposes corresponding compensation means for the barriers in the poetic translation. For example, it proposes the compensation means like conversion, abandoning and interpretation for the image translation, and generalization for allusion translation; it proposes to maintain the original musicality for rhyme translation no matter what form to take, in rhymed or free verse form; it also proposes appropriate additions and omissions to the original for make the version idiomatic. This paper does not make a special illustration on compensation means to the style translation, for the author believes that so long as the details are treated properly, the original style will be naturally represented in the version.At last , taking the four versions of Jing Ye Si as examples, this paper illustrates how to apply the principle of optimal approximation to evaluate different versions.