The English Translation Of Tang Poems Viewed From André Lefevere's Rewriting Theory

AndréLefevere's Rewriting Theory is an important approach to translation studies. Its core concept is that"Translation is a rewriting of an original text". By defining the factors—ideology, poetics and patronage and describing their roles in the process of rewriting, Lefevere managed to construct his theoretical system of translation studies and to guide the whole process of translation as well as translation related activities. This new approach has greatly widened the theoretical scope of translation studies. Lefevere's Rewriting Theory is of great significance to translation studies, especially to the studies of literary translation, and at the same time it is enlightening to China's academic circles. Its importance is specifically embodied in the following aspects: to revolutionize the traditional model of translation studies; to give prominence to translator's subjectivity and to provide a stage for the dialogue between translation theory and practice.This thesis is an attempt to study the translation of Tang poems from the perspective of AndréLefevere's rewriting theory.Tang poems, with their splendid artistic achievements, are gems of the world literary treasury. Poems written by Li Bai, Du Fu and many other poets are widely spread in the world and loved by people in lots of countries, particularly in the English-speaking countries. The English translation of Tang poems not only introduces their artistry to the English-speaking countries, so that the western readers can have the aesthetic enjoyment, but also makes a huge impact on the creation of neo-English poems. For example, it is well known that modern poets, like Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, influenced by the artistry of Tang poems, made their efforts to push forward the movement of neo-English poems.As everyone knows, to translate literature, especially poetry of different nations both from the language form and from the mentality is a difficult work. Many poets and theorists hold the view that"Poems are untranslatable."British poet P. B. Shelley in his Defense of Poetry said,"it were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its color and odor, as to seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet."In his point of view,"To translate poems is futile". American poet, Robert Frost, also held the point of view that"Poetry is what gets lost in translation". The famous linguist R. Jakobson declared that, strictly speaking, poems are not translatable. Although these remarks are discouraging, many outstanding translators'practice of translating Tang poems have proved that poems can be translated fairly accurately and vividly from one language into another and can be spread in another country.Among those who thought poems could be translated, Ezra Pound, the American poet and translator, the famous Chinese scholars, Weng Xianliang and Xu Yuanzhong, are the remarkable representatives. Although they used different methods in translating, their translations were successful. Pound translated Tang poems in the form of blank verse. He disregarded the rhythms, metres and level or oblique tones of Tang poems, on the contrary, he paid much attention to their intuition impression and effects, juxtaposition of images, luminous details and vivid presentation. In translating Tang poems, Professor Weng Xianliang translated them in the unrhymed and unlined prose form. In the process of translation, he didn't rigidly adhere to the corresponding of words and sentences and disregarded the lengths and sequence of the sentences. His translations break the uniformity and sequence of the original and are completely free of the original rhyming form of Tang poems. Professor Xu Yuanzhong has translated Tang poems in the rhymed verse form. His translations are based on his famous theory of"beauty in three aspects"of literary translation. When we analyze their translations, we may combine Lefevere's Rewriting Theory with these three translators'practice of translating Tang poems. The author of this thesis has chosen some of their translated versions for studying and tried to analyze how they rewrite Tang poems from the perspective of ideology and poetics, namely, to take their practice of translating Tang poems as examples to examine this theory's explanatory power, thus the author draws a conclusion, that is, guided by this theory, these three translators'translations of Tang poems may be accepted by people.