Integration Of Translation And Poetics

"Poetics"is perhaps back to the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle's"Poetics", which is literary theory mainly about drama criticism. It is said that in the era of Aristotle poetics is often used in the general sense of art. Narrow understanding of poetics to be"research on the poem"undoubtedly greatly narrows the scope of poetics, obscures the poetic light. Poetics in this paper is generated from Aristotelian poetics which refers to general literary theory. Or by reference to Jakobson's preliminary definition,"Poetics concerns what makes the speech into works of art."Throughout the history of Western translation theories, there are a lot of integrations between translation theories and poetics. Jakobson points out that the language has six functions, one of the most innovative theories is to emphasize the poetic function of language. George Steiner attempts to establish a"systematic poetics on translation"from philosophical perspective. Meschonnic insists poetry is"theory concerning the value and meaning of work"; the function of translation is"poetic and cultural generation and conversion". Lefevere points out that all rewritings in translation reflect a certain ideology and poetics. Playing an important role in the literary, poetics includes not only the social dominant poetics, but also the translator's individual poetics.Chinese translation theories poetry also flash poetic light, and many of the translators explicitly or implicitly convey a certain poetic thought in their translation theories and practices. Yan Fu's elegance to some extent exposes his poetic consciousness. Other theories such as Fu Lei's spiritual resonance and Qian Zhongshu's realm of transformation also display poetic connotation. Chinese traditional translation theory highlights the utmost aim of faithfulness. Under the request of social poetics; the translator must be as much as possible faithful to the original in content and form. What's more, such traditional poetics has exerted its effects today.With profound life experience and comprehensive understandings and appreciations of Chinese and English languages and cultures, Yang Xianyi successfully translates many Chinese classics into English. With China's unique social constraints and poetic influence, Yang gradually enhances his own poetic accomplishment and pursuit, and successfully applies poetics into his practices of classics translation.On the theoretical basis of integration of poetics and translation, this paper attempts to study Yang Xianyi's translation of Chinese classics from the perspective of poetics of translation, to analyze with cases his translation strategies concerning language, literature and culture, and to expose influences of China's unique social poetics and Yang's personal poetics.This thesis mainly consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 is an introduction of the aim, significance and methodology of the study, and the structure of the thesis. Chapter 2 is a review of the related literature including researches on poetics of translation at home and abroad, and researches on Yang Xianyi's translation of Chinese classic works. Chapter 3 is the theoretical framework which presents the integration of translation and poetics with firstly arguments of poetics, linguistic origin of poetics of translation, culture turn of poetics of translation and then poetics in Chinese traditional theories of translation. Chapter 4 attempts to study Yang Xianyi's translation of Chinese classics from the perspective of poetics of translation, to analyze with cases his translation strategies concerning language, literature and culture, and to expose influences of China's unique social poetics and Yang's personal poetics. Chapter 5 presents the conclusion of the thesis.Obviously it's an innovative attempt to interpret Yang's translation from the perspective of poetics. This paper is looking forward finding a new path for the research of Chinese classics translation.