A Pragmatic Analysis Of Deixis In English Translation Of Chinese Classical Poems

Chinese classical poems are a great treasure of Chinese culture, possessing a special linguistic form. Tang poems are the representative of Chinese classical poems, which take the main forms of classical poems: lushi, quatrain, ancient-style poem. The English translation of Chinese classical poems has been a topic of study in the resent years, and various editions of translation have emerged. However, the studies on English translation of Chinese classical poems are mainly from a literary or aesthetic perspective (Huang Guowen, 2006), taking Xu Yuanchong and Gu Zhengyang as an example. The present thesis attempts to analyze and discuss English translation of Chinese classical poems from a pragmatic perspective. Because of the abundant use of deixis and its important role in the translation, we choose deixis as the object of this study.The present study is based on the theory of deixis in the pragmatic field. Pragmatics appeared first in 1930s, and it has developed rapidly as an independent subject since 1970s. Deixis is the first topic of pragmatics as well as one of the basic topics. According to the studies by Fillmore (1971) and Levinson (1983), deixis can be classified into five kinds: person deixis, place deixis, time deixis, discourse deixis and social deixis. The former three kinds of deixis are more typical and common than the latter two kinds (Suo Zhenyu, 2000), and they are more often used in the translation, especially person deixis. Based on the five kinds of deixis, the present thesis makes a comparative analysis of the different use of deixis in Chinese poems and English translation. The analyzed texts are mainly from Xu Yuanchong's translation of Tang poems in the book 300 Tang Poems: An Annotated Edition with Commentaries (Chinese-English) (2006). After the analysis, we propose three modes of the use of deixis in Chinese and English: equivalent use of deixis (the use of deixis in English with its corresponding deixis in Chinese); non-equivalent use of deixis (the use of deixis in English with other deictic expressions in Chinese); deixis used in English with its gap in Chinese (the use of deixis in English with no deictic expressions in Chinese). Then we analyze the English translation of a representative Tang poem The Moon over the River on a Spring Night, in order to make a further discussion on the different use of deixis in Chinese and English.The present thesis discusses the reasons for the different use of deixis from four aspects: the use of deixis for cohesion and coherence --- the use of deixis is helpful to achieve cohesion and coherence; the different expressions of deictic information in Chinese and English --- different ways are used to express deictic information in Chinese and English; the differences between Chinese and English --- differences between languages lead to the differences of vocabulary and grammar as well as the thinking mode; the social and cultural factors --- the social background and cultural information influence the use of words. All of these four aspects influence the use of deixis in Chinese and English.There are five chapters in the present thesis.Chapter one is the introduction about why we select the present topic.Chapter two is literature review. In this chapter, we summarize the previous studies on deixis and translation.Chapter three is the analysis of the use of deixis in the English translation of Chinese classical poems. After the analysis, we propose three modes of uses of deixis, with which we analyze the poem The Moon over the River on a Spring Night as a sample.Chapter four is the discussion on the reasons for the different use of deixis in English and Chinese, from four aspects.Chapter five is conclusion. In this chapter, we get a conclusion of the whole thesis and present the limitation for further study.The present thesis studies the English translation of Chinese classical poems from a linguistic perspective, analyzing and discussing the different use of deixis. This is but an attempt to study English translation of Chinese classical poems on the basis of linguistic theory.