Imago Transformation Of Ancient Chinese Poems Translated By Ezra Pound

The classical Chinese poetry, with peculiar cultural characteristics, is marked for its concise and implicit poetic language, with imago as the most vivid and beautiful part. Imago is the soul of classical Chinese poetry. Therefore, the translator's recognition of the imago will not only affect his decoding and encoding of images in his translation, but also determine the quality of the version with transference of imago as the core of poem translation.This thesis, at first, gives a brief introduction to Ezra Pound, and generalizes the fundamental theories of Imagism and Horizon of Expectation, then analyzes the reasons for the emergence of Imagism in the British and American poetry world, and Western's expectations under such social background. Studying the principal theory of Imagism and its origin, the thesis tries to expound the inner relationship between Western Imagism and classical Chinese poetics through comparison. Taking classical Chinese poems rendered by Pound as object of research, especially on Cathay, the thesis systematically analyzes how Pound realizes his image transformation in rendering classicalChinese poetry : Firstly, embodying image by employing visual art——theusage of color, shape and superposition; secondly, achieving imago transformation by the translation of originality: Enriching imago with skillful disposal of key words and sentences; Inspiring readers' imago thought through connotative Expression; Using meter to grow on the sense of imago. Generally speaking, Pound's creative translation and the ancient Chinese poems selected cater to the Horizons of Expectations of his era and his skillful translation brings out many new thoughts in poetry translation and poetry itself, so his rendering is broadly accepted.This thesis attempts to draw a conclusion that imago and imagery in classical Chinese poetry display holistic, implicit and cultural-dependent features. In the process of translation, the features of imago may cause difficulties in both comprehension and expression. In translation, neglecting the features of imago may result in problems which may affect the aesthetic effect of the version. As for the methods to render the imago, translation is a kind of complex mental activity. Translation of classical Chinese poetry is particularly a piece of demanding work which involves various factors like language, culture and thinking mode. It is hoped that the attempt made in this thesis may to some extent prove beneficial in translation studies.