Xu Zhimo's Translation Of Thomas Hardy's Poems In Light Of Alienizing Translation

Xu Zhimo is a pioneer of the New Poetry Movement in the 1920s and makes sustained effort in using vernacular Chinese in his creation and poetry translation. Xu is a great poet as well as an excellent translator. His literary achievement has received a great deal of favorable comments. However, the researches on Xu Zhimo mainly focus on his poetry creation, while his identity as a poet translator and achievement in poetry translation have long been neglected. And the relatively few comments on his poetry translation mainly seem to be negative. It forms a sharp contrast to the abundant researches on his poetry writings and his literary fame. The thesis intends to analyze the features of Xu's translation of Thomas Hardy's poems from the perspective of alienizing translation, so as to give a relatively objective evaluation of Xu Zhimo's poetry translation.By addressing the aesthetic principle of alienizing translation, the writer explores the alienizing effect in Xu Zhimo's translation of Hardy's poems. As a poet-translator, Xu's poetry creation is closely linked with his poetry translation. The thesis analyzes the factors that influence Xu's selection of Hardy's poems. To Xu Zhimo, Hardy is his most admired poet. Twenty-one of his translated poems are of Hardy's, which account for one-third of the whole number of Xu's translated poems. Xu Zhimo imitates Hardy's originality in versification and poetic forms both in his poetry creation and translation practice. Xu's creativity in poetry creation and translation is positively affected by Hardy.The thesis focuses on the strategy of alienizing translation in Xu's translation of Hardy's poems. Xu not only imitates Hardy's poetic form and keeps the alien rhyme schemes of the source texts, but also adopts the free verse and irregular indentations of English poetry in his translations. He makes some certain bold additions, deletion and alternation of the diction in the source text, and uses colloquialisms and vernacular Chinese in his renditions. Additionally, While the New Chinese literature calls on all Chinese to come together to fight for their country, Xu Zhimo breaks the expectancy of the target audience and selects Hardy's melancholy and sentimental poems as his source texts of translation. These features of Xu's translation make the target texts unusual, and appealingly fresh and new, help to increase the difficulty of perception and arouse the target audience's interest to appreciate the beauty of the target text, hence achieve the alienizing effect in his poetry translation.Xu Zhimo's use of vernacular Chinese and the experiment with the new versification through his practice in poetry translation make a significant contribution to the formation and development of the New Poetry of his day.