An Analytical Study On Cultural Mistranslations Of Chinese Classical Poetry In The Light Of Philosophical Hermeneutics

Chinese classical poetry is a precious gem of Chinese culture. It embodies the beauty of wording, writing, and thinking. What is more important is that it holds in store very rich cultural connotations and cultural values. Translating Chinese classical poetry into English, in the era of cultural globalization, is crucially important to the wide spreading of Chinese culture and to the interaction and communication between all the cultures in the whole world.As we all know, writing a poem is very difficult, but by comparison with writing, translating a poem, especially a Chinese classical poem into English, is twice as difficult. Due to the intrinsic differences between the English language and Chinese, in most cases, it's impossible to create an absolutely faithful version equivalent to the original in all aspects. Moreover, Chinese classical poetry is noted for unique cultural connotations, which are extremely difficult for foreign translators who don't understand Chinese culture well. Although many good Chinese classical poems have already been successfully rendered into English by foreign translators, we can still find quite a lot of defects or even obvious mistranslations in the translated versions. As is often the case, cultural mistranslation is unavoidable because of cultural barriers, although the translators keep trying their best to reach their goals by presenting genuinely good translations of Chinese classical poetry as much as possible. At present, no systematical research has been conducted on cultural mistranslation of Chinese classical poetry, which needs further study by translators who have passions for poetry translation.By grounding the analytical study on the theories of Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, this thesis attempts to examine the causes of cultural mistranslation of Chinese classical poetry in a careful and detailed way. It begins with an overall review of Chinese classical poetry and cultural mistranslations found in the existing English versions. Cultural mistranslation, as a very complex cultural phenomenon, is completely different from those translation errors or mistakes at the linguistic level and it can be divided into two categories: unintentional mistranslation and intentional mistranslation. After tracing the origin, development of hermeneutics and analyzing different viewpoints of some major representative figures of hermeneutics, it is decided that Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics is more suitable to account for the underlying causes of cultural mistranslation. Several notions in Gadamer's theory are introduced to analyze the unintentional and intentional mistranslations. To make the analysis more convincing, many poems and their translations are carefully selected as case-study materials.In the light of Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, this thesis has drawn the following conclusion: the openness of the text provides the possibility of cultural mistranslation; translator's unawareness of false prejudice arouses his unconscious misunderstanding of the text which leads to unintentional cultural mistranslation; in order to solve clashes and conflicts formed in the fusion of horizons and meet the need of the target readers and his or her own demand, the translator has to distort the content of the original text in many cases, which inevitably gives rise to mistranslation. It is hoped that the job will shed some light on the study and the practice of translation of Chinese classical poetry.