On Reproduction Of Artistic Conception In C-E Poetry Translation

John Turner, an outstanding Chinese culture researcher, once commented that Chinese culture was the most artistic and longest-established culture that had ever existed. Poetry is the succinct part in Chinese and culture-loaded. Artistic conception is the charm of poetry. So it is vital in poetry creation and appreciation, no matter whether it is English poetry or Chinese poetry. Meanwhile, artistic conception is a difficult point in poetry translation. Time-consuming and pains-taking as it is, many scholars try to do this job in spite of the fact that the target version may not be as beautiful as the original.Guided by the constituents of artistic conception, this thesis sets out to make a tentative study on the reproduction of artistic conception. Brilliant poems are sung again and again generations after generations because of their beautiful artistic conception. Artistic conception was noticed long ago. The raise of the concept and its development have experienced a long time. Even until now, not any definition can be accepted by all the people. Artistic conception, the core and soul of Chinese poetry, functions a lot. Its essence must be explored from three aspects, which are aesthetic nature, inner-construction, and outer-construction of literary and artistic works. Aesthetic nature or historic significance refers to the point that artistic and literary works must conform to the development of history. Inner-construction refers to the logical thinking system during the author's creation. Outer-construction is the semiotic system, In an author's thinking activities, artistic conception makes the subject material more figurative and beautiful as aesthetic objects. The ideal realm of artistic conception can break through the limit of time and space with limited words, languages, sounds and colors. Artistic conception is mainly constructed by images, feelings, poetic language and musicality.Based on a tentative exploration into artistic conception, the thesis firstly points out that images are the basic integration of artistic conception. Images embody the poets' emotions and make those abstract and difficult definitions concrete, figurative and image bearing, Images can be classified into static and dynamic ones according to the state of being. Mixing the two types of images is one of main characters of poems. With the combination of the dynamic and static images, poets can describe a beautiful picture and evoke readers' imagination. Its function decides that translators must use flexible methods to tackle the images properly to reproduce a similar artistic conception to that of the original. The author advocates two methods: 1 preserving the original state of being; 2 changing the state of being. Which method should be taken is determined by the need of reproducing similar artistic conception as that of the original. Juxtaposed images should be considered carefully and proper prepositions and connectives should be employed. Allusion images usually relate to culture, so notes should be used to explain their connotation.Then the thesis explores the reproduction of poetic language. The form of expression in poetry is fu, bi, and xing, which are similar to association, metaphor, and symbolization. Images in poetry can evoke readers' imagination. Whenever poets write poetry, association and imagination necessarily function. While bi in poetry does not only include metaphor, but also simile(明喻), metonymy(借喻), synecdoche(提喻), hyperbole(夸张), analogy(比喻,相似), zeugma(拈连), transferred epithet(移情) etc. On reproduction of metaphor, three methods are introduced: 1 direct transfer; 2 using simile; 3 paraphrasing. Xing is mainly about images, so it is not discussed in this part.Poetry can not exist without musicality. Musicality is vital to poetry (in this thesis, poetry usually refers to verses). It can create aesthetic or artistic atmospheres with which the poem is pleasing to read, listen and remember. English and Chinese belong to different families and they have different language formation, rhymes, rhythms, tones, tonal patterns(平仄) and so on. In order to reproduce artistic conception, those unique characters in English such as meter, rhythm, rhyme, stress etc. can be used as substitutes. Onomatopoeia should be replaced with these counterparts in English as well.Based on the analysis, the thesis comes to a conclusion. In reproducing artistic conception in English versions, images, poetic language, metaphor, musicality and other factors including cultural and aesthetic subject's factors must be focused. Which method will be employed depends on how well the artistic conception can be reproduced. By doing so, the English readers can relive an identical or similar experience to that of the Chinese readers.