Creative Treason In Classical Chinese Poetry Translation:a Skopostheorie Perspective

Classical Chinese Poetry, as the most important literary carrier of ancientChinese history and culture, is often deemed extremely difficult to translate due tolinguistic and cultural barriers. The unique form and structure of Classical ChinesePoetry are hard to be kept in their English version because of the huge differencebetween the two languages. However, even if the form and structure are retained,translation of Classical Chinese Poetry often results in the loss of meanings orimageries. Chinese translator Xu Yuanchong puts forward his famous theory "Beautyin form, sound and meaning" on poetry translation. But translators often find thestandard of three beauties cannot be achieved simultaneously. In translation practice,the translator should try to make his translation realize the purpose of inter-culturalcommunication. At the same time, he should realize the aesthetic reproduction of theoriginal poetry so that his translation can help foreign readers appreciate aestheticfeature of the Chinese language and Chinese poetry. Besides, he should make histranslation loyal to the source poetry as much as possible. The above threeconsiderations the translator must take into is just what the three rules ofSkopostheorie requires.The theory that translation is a purposeful activity comes from Germanfunctionalist Skopostheorie which believes that, based on his own purpose or thepurpose the translation ought to realize, the translator has the right to make someadjustment to the source text under the premise of fidelity. That is to say, ends justifymeans. Translators’ choices of translation strategy should serve for differenttranslation Skopos or purposes. Their conscious or purposeful adoption of suitabletranslation skills inevitably results in creative treason in their translation.The most important content of Skopostheorie is the three rules: Skopos rule,coherence rule and fidelity rule. This thesis is based on the above three rules ofSkopostheorie and selects both the source and translated versions as representative examples for language, style and cultural research. All the examples presented in thisthesis are devoted to explain how the three rules are implemented in translationpractice and whether or not these translation works meet the requirement of the threerules. Firstly, the author chooses Ezra Pound and Gary Snyder’s translation toillustrate how the translator’s translation purpose affects their preference of thechoice of source texts, their choosing of words and their variation of the originalimageries. Secondly, the examples of the translation of culture-loaded words andhistorical allusions such as “银河”,“黄泉”,“玄宗”,“杜鹃”,etc. illustrate thattranslators adopt some variation measures to help foreign readers understand andappreciate the cultural and historic content of the original poetry through a series oftranslation strategies such as adding, deleting, altering, substituting, etc. thirdly, theauthor chooses the examples of Xin Qiji’s “丑奴儿”, the poetry from the Book ofSongs, Li Bai’s “早发白帝城” and other poetry to illustrate how the translators trytheir best to retain the aesthetic characteristics of the original form, sound andimageries in their translations.Above all, this thesis is designed to emphasize the guidance and importanceSkopostheorie has contributed to the translation of Classical Chinese poetry throughthe analysis of some examples. These examples in the thesis are selected to cover allthe aspects the three rules of Skopostheorie touches upon. They not only display thecharacteristics of Classical Chinese poetry, but also demonstrate that Skopostheorie isapplicable to the analysis of poetry and other literary translation. This thesis alsoaims at finding more convincing theoretical basis for future research on ClassicalChinese poetry translation from the perspective of Skopostheorie. The author hopesto draw more attention from translators to devote to poetry translation field.