A Study Of Image In The English Translation Of Tang Poetry

Tang poetry is not only a gem in Chinese literature, but also an exotic flower in the world literary garden. To translate Tang poetry into English so that English readers can appreciate it is not only the demand for cultural communication between China and western countries, but also the pursuit in translation circles. Since British Sinologist and poet S.Jenyns first translated 300 Tang poems into English in the 18^th century, many translators home and abroad began to concentrate on conveying the unique aesthetic verve in Tang poetry through C-E translation. Excellent translators like Ezra Pound, Arthur Waley, theYangs (杨宪益夫妇)and Xu Yuanzhong (许渊冲) leave us a set of wonderful translation works, which turns Tang poetry into the most centralized field in the C-E translation of Chinese literary works.Image is a very important term in Chinese classical literary theory, which mainly embodies in the creation of Chinese classical poetry. The reason why British Sinologist Arthur Waley considers image as soul of poetry is that image accumulates and reflects abundant Chinese culture. Hu Yinglin(胡应麟), who is a famous scholar in the Ming Dynasty, also agreed that image is the most admirable thing in classical poetry. The aesthetic pursuit of Chinese classical poetry, which are yi (意)combining with xiang (象) and sensation being mingled into scene, is ideally performed in Tang poetry . To some extent, to translate poetry is to translate images, that is to say, the C-E translation process of a Tang poem is the process of image recombination and emersion in English. It is no doubt that to do English translation research of Tang poetry through researching image transference is a significant subject. Taking English translation of Tang poetry as the research object, the dissertation discusses the connotation and evolvement of image in Chinese and western literature, and the influence which image brings in poem translation. Furthermore, the author chooses some representative translators to do case study for the purpose to put forward principles and strategies about image translation.This dissertation mainly adopts linguistic and cultural comparative method to do research. Besides introduction and conclusion, there are four chapters in this dissertation.The introduction of the dissertation gives readers a current research survey about English translation of Tang poetry and image transference in Tang poetry. Through analyzing and using predecessors' research achievements for reference, the author puts forward the research orientation. At present, three usual approaches adopted in Chinese classical poetic research are linguistic approach, literary approach and poetic approach, therefore, research about image translation is deficient. Several research papers about English translation of Tang poetry seem to accept the face of doing rhythm translation research, which calls for the image translation research. This dissertation is a study of poetic image in the English translation of Tang poetry on the basis of discussing culture factors. Chinese classical poetry stresses on expressing the emotion, and poet's subjective emotion is the main clue of a poem, which is represented by scenery. The trait of image in Chinese classical poetry is "sensation being mingled into scenery", which is absolutely different from "objective homologue" or just "object" in western imagism. In Chapter One, the author expounds the connotation and development of "image" in Chinese and western culture through comparative study. After a historic description about the connotation of image, the dissertation emphatically analyzes the aesthetic functions and expressive devices of image in Chinese and western poetic creation so as to bring forth the difference between Chinese poetic "image" and the "image" in western imagism.Chapter Two discusses the translatability and its difficulties of poetic image through analyzing cultural commonness and difference. The commonness of human cultural aesthetic conception promotes the existence and development of translation, which is also the foundation of poetic translatability. However, cultural differences between Chinese and western language lead to some difficulties in image transference. Poetic image performs different aesthetic sensation in Chinese and western countries, which is the primary reason to cause translatable difficulties. During translation process, one's standard of translation depends on the degree that one can overcome aesthetic difference.Chapter Three chooses some representative works from three influential translators, Ezra Pound, Arthur Waley and Xu Yuanzhong (许渊冲) , who have received great achievements in the English translation of Tang poetry to do case study. Through detailed analysis, further research about the difference of poetic image under different culture background is made, and also, techniques and limitations about image transference are discussed.The author in Chapter Four adopts the theory of translation level to discuss the translation of poetic image, and put forward principles and strategies of image translation. According to Professor Xu Jun (许均), translation can be divided into three levels which are the level of thinking, semantic level and aesthetic level. Translation principles about poetic image should both take semantic equivalence and aesthetic equivalence into consideration. In the light of this functional equivalence, the author puts forward image translation strategies. In order to keep semantic equivalence, we should aptly adopt domestication and foreignization according to different poetic images. Furthermore, we can adopt some approaches of poetic creation into image translation, such as Montage and Empathy so as to achieve aesthetic equivalence.Conclusion expounds that image translation is the key point of poetic translation, which is worth doing further research. Although this dissertation has made an elementary study about it, limiting to the historic complexity about the conception of image, the divergent comprehension toward image, and the insufficient analysis to C-E translation practice of Chinese classical poetry, this study still has limitations to be improved.