| Although Li Qingzhao is a brilliant poetess, English translation studies of her ci-poems are far from enough or systematic. This thesis attempts a contrastive study of the three English versions of her ci-poems from the perspective of "Approach to Translation as Adaptation and Selection"(ATAS) put forward by Professor Hu Gengshen. The three representative versions are Kenneth Rexroth and Zhong Ling’s Li Ch’ing-chao, Eugene Eoyang’s translation in Women Writers of Traditional China and Xu Yuanchong’s rendering in Literature and Translation.This thesis probes into three questions. The first is how the three translators conduct the three dimensional adaptive transformations and what are the differences of their adaption and selection. Transformation in the linguistic dimension is analyzed at phonological, lexical, syntactic and textual levels. Cultural dimension includes translations of tune titles, culture-loaded words and allusions. The communicative dimension comprises the use of colloquial language to express deep feeling and the use of rich images to convey abstract emotion. The second is to evaluate objectively whether the three versions reach high Degrees of Multi-Dimensional Transformations (DMDT) and which version achieves the highest. The third is to establish a model of evaluating translation of ci-poems within the theoretical framework of the ATAS.The study is significant in four aspects. Firstly, it proves the feasibility of the ATAS on the contrast of Chinese classical ci-poems. Secondly, it enriches research on the translation of Li’s ci-poems. Thirdly, through analysis there comes a conclusion:all the three translators have conducted the three dimensional transformations and their versions achieved a high DMDT. Comprehensively speaking, Xu’s version has achieved the highest. Fourthly the critical model can both further the theory of the ATAS and help improve the translation quality in practice. |
PDF Full Text Request