English Translation Of Shijing: Misreading And Reconstruction

Misreading as a theory was first put forward by Harold Bloom, who named "misreading" as "clinamen" in The Anxiety of Influence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), to describe the inclination of writers to swerve from the influence of their predecessors. Back to 1964 in China, Qian Zhongshu (钱锺书) commented, in his essay "The Translation of Lin Shu", on deviation from the original during translating, its reasons and inevitability. The most influential book in China which deals with misreading in translation is Unicorn and Drangon (1995). In the Preface, Yue Daiyun (乐黛云) defined "misreading" as follows: When people contact a foreign culture, they can hardly understand it free from their inherent cultural tradition and thinking mode, thus the foreign culture is filtered, and misreading between cultures is caused. (cf.乐黛云, 1995: 1)Since 1990s, studies on misreading in translation have been increasing. It's generally acknowledged that the phenomenon of misreading has its justification, and it bears both positive and negative influences; comprehensive study on misreading helps to find out the discrepancies between culture systems, furthermore, how and why the original was distorted.This dissertation is a case study of Arthur Waley's English version of Shijing—The Book of Songs. From a hermeneutic perspective, the dissertation describes misreading in Shijing translation, the dissemination and reconstruction of Shijing in English world, then analyzes the influences of misreading. In addition, the reception and influence of Shijing in Western history is depicted diachronically.The dissertation is composed of three chapters:Chapter 1 is literature review. In this chapter, Shijing and its English translations are briefly introduced, and then an exploration of previous studies on English translation of Shijing is carried out.Chapter 2 describes misreading in The Book of Songs from three aspects of image, writing style and historical and cultural connotation; meanwhile, this chapter explores the underlying reasons and influences of misreading from a hermeneutic view.Chapter 3 analyzes how Shijing was reconstructed in Waley's version from two aspects: paratext as translation and manipulation of the original images.At the end of this dissertation, the author points out that the inevitability of misreading makes translation an art of approximation, therefore, translated version is not and will never be of total equivalence to the original, whereas misreading provides chance for translators to realize their interpretation, and helps to enrich the original. Since human needs self-promotion through communication with others, translation is necessary and bound to be on the way of perfection.