On Licensing Conditions Of Poetry Translation: An Ethical Perspective

The study of translation ethics extends the focus of translation research from the source text, target text and translation subjects to the ethical norms and codes of translation, thus it makes translation study more inclusive. The licensing conditions of poetry translation are related with translators'attitudes and all the choices they make during translation process, which are inseparable from the focuses of translation ethics, namely, translators'quality and accomplishment, the ethical relations among the subjects of translation activity. Therefore, this thesis intends to apply the theory of translation ethics to the analysis of licensing conditions of poetry translation. It extends the vision of poetry translation study to ethical layer, with the purpose of providing a new methodology for the study of poetry translation and giving some references to poetry translators.Based on some previous translation theories, this thesis generalizes the licensing conditions of poetry translation into three, namely, faithfulness to the original poem, adaptation to the target cultural context, and conformance to target readers'aesthetic expectations. Then, from the perspective of translation ethics, it further analyzes the above licensing conditions in a more inclusive and dialectical way, and points out that: due to the cultural, linguistic and some other untranslatable elements of poetry, it is necessary for translators to do some "creative treason" so as to accomplish the translation task, promote effective communication and enrich cultures of each country. Moreover, as the subject of poetry translation, translators have personal ethics as well as professional ethics which also makes "creative treason" inevitable; secondly, translation ethics of sameness emphasizes assimilation in translation process and this provides basis for translation of commonness between the original and the target cultural contexts, while translation ethics of difference stresses on keeping the differences among different cultures under the principle of equal communication. This provides basis for translation of particular cultural images; lastly, target readers own some common ethical values, thus, it is reasonable to demand translators to conform to target readers'aesthetic expectations. However, different target readers have different ethical values and different perspective reflection about the same translated version. Thus, the diversified ethical values of them make the deviation of their aesthetic expectations inevitable.This thesis points out that in order to fully reflect the objective rules and essential properties of poetry translation, its licensing conditions couldn't be too ideal and abstract. Poetry translation is related with various influencing factors and diversified demands of different subjects, and there are big differences among these factors and demands. If a universal licensing condition is needed, it shouldn't be an ideal one. Oriented by ethical values, we hold that in poetry translation translators should take all ethical elements into consideration, coordinate the relations among them, and not violate the ethical codes of other nations. This can be regarded as the basic licensing condition, based on this, other concrete licensing conditions could be followed and thus, poetry translation can have an immense open space.