Ezra Pound's Translation Of Cathay Based On Adaptation Theory

As one of the most influential figures in the English and American literary world in the 20th century, Ezra Pound is known mainly as a poet. Actually, he was also a great translator. Among his translations, the most famous one is Cathay, a booklet of translations of 19 Classical Chinese poems. In this thesis, the author aims to study Pound's translation of Cathay from the perspective of Jef Verschueren's Adaptation Theory (Hereafter AT), and draws the conclusion that it's feasible to explain Cathay with AT.Chapter One is a brief introduction of the thesis; Chapter Two is an introduction of Jef Verschueren's Adaptation Thoery collected from his book titled"Understanding Pragmatics". In this book Verschueren held that language use is a continuous process of choice-making for interlingual and extralingual reasons with different degrees of salience. Within the framework of this Adaptation Theory, there are three properties of language, which are variability, negotiability and adaptability. Adaptability assigns four clear tasks or angles of investigation to pragmatic descriptions, which are contextual correlates of adaptability, structural objects of adaptability, dynamics of adaptability and salience of the adaptation processes.Chapter Three is about the application of Adaptation Theory in translation practice. Large amount of examples are presented to test the workability of Adaptation Theory in translation from the four angles of investigation.Chapter Four is an introduction of the key figure of this thesis—Ezra Pound. His life experience, his translation experience and works, translation theories reflected in his translation of Cathay are discussed.Chapter Five, which is also the major part of this thesis. In this chapter, translations in Cathay are studied from the perspective of Adaptation Theory from four angles with abundant of cases. On the foundation of this case study, Cathay is analyzed at various levels and from different aspects, such as communicative and linguistic contexts, rhyme, style and other factors. The successful analysis of this case reflects the feasibility of Adaptation Theory in the study of Cathay. In Chapter Six, after the analysis of Cathay with Adaptation Theory, the author arrives at the conclusion that Verschueren's Adaptation Theory not only provides a theoretical foundation for Pound's translation practice and strategies, but also is instructive for translation practice.