On The Translation Of Classical Chinese Poetry-From The Perspective Of Fuzzy Linguistics

Fuzziness is the property and one of most universal and perplexing features of natural language. It is full of the levels of vocabularies, sentences and texts. Fuzziness has evoked increasing interest and endeavor from linguists and translators,and promoted the birth and development of fuzzy linguistics, a comparatively new discipline in linguistic field in 1970s. The publication of well-known article"Preliminary Studies in Fuzzy linguistics"by Wu Tieping starts the discussion of fuzzy linguistics among Chinese researchers. Fuzzy linguistics is a fast-developed and influential linguistic discipline. Up to now, general agreements at home and abroad have been achieved on the definitions of fuzziness and fuzzy-set and the three characteristics of fuzzy language: indeterminacy, determinacy and variability. Fuzziness is a common feature of the language in literary works, and the translation of fuzzy language is worthy of attention. Classical Chinese poetry, with its high density of images and terseness of language, unconventional and irregular grammar and the possibility of different interpretations of the same imagery, is bound to entail fuzziness on different levels. Therefore, translation of fuzzy language in classical Chinese poetry is a complex problem.This thesis, resorting to the definition of fuzziness, the most remarkable feature of fuzzy language: indeterminacy and the achievements made in fuzzy language translation, divides fuzziness in classical Chinese poetry into three types: semantic fuzziness, grammatical fuzziness and fuzziness in imagery and different translations of the same fuzzy language are also analyzed with illustrations of classical Chinese poems. Finally, three strategies for translating fuzzy languages are put forward: fuzzy equivalence, clarification and inner-text and outer-text compensation.