The Translator's Aesthetic Empathy In Translating Object-describing Poems In The Tang Dynasty

Poetry translation is a cross-linguistic literary recreation and the translator's empathy plays an important role in the process. The translator's empathy is described not only as the emotional appreciation of the author's experience of pleasure, but also as a process of understanding the author's subjective experience by vicariously sharing that experience in his attempt to reproduce it in the target language. By way of the analysis of the aesthetic empathy in translation process, the thesis intends to reveal the fact that by vicarious participation, the translator plays a double role, a reader and creator, who first tries to understand the aesthetic experience of the original writer or poet and shares it with him or her, and then reproduces it. As the reflection of such empathetic ability, the translator's initiatives should be attached great importance to. Within a manageable scope, the thesis focuses on the translator's aesthetic empathy in two categories of object-describing poems in the Tang Dynasty, namely, poems conveying the physical and spiritual being of the objects and poems conveying the poet's feelings. With a detailed review of them, the author proceeds to conclude that by using his or her initiative, the translator can have the ability to appreciate beauty, and by way of"feeling into the subject", he or she can reproduce the aesthetic effect of the poetry in its English versions. From the empathetic viewpoint, the translation of object-describing poems is in essence the translation of the poet's emotions. The translator's empathetic ability, or to be more specific, his initiatives, turns out to be a decisive factor in the emotional communication and transference. Therefore, in terms of his initiatives, the translator's aesthetic empathy should be emphasized in the translation of the object-describing poems.