A Comparative Study On English Translation Of Chinese Tang Poetry From Perspective Of Rewriting Theory

The great cause of translating Chinese Tang poetry has undergone over one hundred years, and scholars have never ceased doing research on it. However, most studies are concerned about the translation of Tang poetry from the angle of linguistics. In the 1980s and 1990s, when there was a boom of new translation theories brought in by "Cultural Turn", the study on English translation of Chinese Tang Poetry has begun to transmit from the perspective of linguistic to that of culture.According to the Rewriting Theory put forward by Andre Lefevere, translation is the rewriting of a source text by the translator. Translation can not take place in a vacuum. Inevitably it is influenced by the factors such as ideology, poetics and so on.Most of studies stand at the micro angle, while making use of the Rewriting Theory, this thesis makes the study of poem translation at the macro-micro angle, and chooses versions of Tang poems translated by Ezra Pound and Xu Yuan-chong as the object of the study in order to prove the close connection between the culture and the translation of Tang poetry. The thesis gives the detailed analysis of the ideology and the poetics concerned when they translate Tang poetry, including the social ones of the two translators and the personal ones, so as to prove influences from the "two factors" especially the personal ones upon the two translators'translation activity. In analysis of personal ideology and personal poetics, the author gives a comprehensive comparison of the two translators'versions from the selection of source texts and the process of translation. Especially the analysis of the translation from the different translators in terms of content and form further testifies the influence of the ideology and poetics upon the translation of Tang poetry.Thus, in the aspect of the manipulation from ideology and poetics, the contrastive study between Ezra Pound and Xu Yuan-chong's personal ideology and poetics is the in-depth study to the manipulation theory. Their personal ideologies are in line with a rudimentary ideology and their personal poetics belongs to peripheral poetics. So the relativity of rewriting theory also demonstrates the role of translators'subjective ideology and poetics in translation and they could be applied to the contrastive study of translators in the same setting in the future.