A Study On The English Translation Of Li Bai’s Political Allegorical Poems Based On The Nine-Space Model---from The Perspective Of Conceptual Blending Theory

This thesis attempts to make a comparison among English versions of Li Bai’s political allegorical poems from the Nine-space model based on Conceptual Blending Theory perspective. It tries to find out whether the Nine-space model can be applied in the translation study of Li Bai’s political allegorical poems and the translation study of other classic poetry. Also, it discusses the theoretical implication to the further translation practice.There were different stages in the poetry development in Tang Dynasty. The demarcation of poems in Early Tang, Heyday Tang, Mid-Tang. Late Tang periods, the romantic and straightforward disposition was replaced by depressed, grave, gloomy and angry mood in the harsh world. Gloom and graveness became the tenor of the poems in Mid-Tang Dynasty. As the leading romantic poet in Chinese poetry history, Li Bai wrote a lot of political allegorical poets among his990pieces. Some of the poems criticized corruptions and the harsh political environment which did not give any chance to talents with noble aspirations. For two centuries, some translators have begun to translate Li Bai’s Poems into other languages and cultures. Li Bai’s Political and Satirical poetry is marked by masculine grandeur and natural grace. Furthermore, Li Bai’s imagery may either be sublime or graceful, so it brings difficulties to its translation.In the1980’s, a new branch of study—cognitive linguistics was developed. It focuses on semantics and has attempted to adopt new methods to probe the law of cognition behind language phenomenon with the help of achievements in psychology and other scientific fields. The Mental Space and Conceptual Blending Theory of Fauconnier (Fauconnier&Turner,2002) provide a new perspective for the translation study. Fauconnier mentioned the implication of context and background to human cognitive activities without systematic and theoretical analysis. Proper interpretation of background under which the poems were composed is especially important to a better understanding of the rich images in the poems and the authors’ sentiments in the English translation of Chinese classical poems. It is imperative to understand the historical and political background in analyzing Li Bai’s political allegorical poems so as to find the reason why Li Bai expressed his love of personal freedom and liberty through poems full of depression, discontent and drunkenness. Nine-space model is a transformation which is required on the basis of Fauconnier’s concept integration network and the characteristics of Li Bai’s political allegorical poems. This paper endeavors to take background information as a part of domain, considering"ancient times"and "present times","reality" and "imagination" as Input Space One and Input Space Two then start overall concept integration network for cross-domain mapping and construct Nine-space model. To cast all the explicit information and implicit background information into nine spaces to consolidate the individual elements into an integrated poem, as a result, the causality between the elements was established, the gist of the poem is grasped, the essence of the poem is abstracted, and the authenticity of the original poem is maintained in the translation. Nine-space model analyzes translation process from new point of view and gives translation study a new methodology.By comparing versions of Li Bai’s political allegorical poems, the aim of the thesis is to discuss the function of nine-space model in grasping the gist of the political allegorical poems and perception of the poet’s idea and feeling; furthermore, to discover omissions and mistakes in translation through the comparison between the images projected into various spaces in the original poem and the images projected into the spaces in the translation. The research result shows that Nine-space model has certain degree of theoretical guidance and explanatory power to the translation study of Li Bai’s Political and Satirical poetry, also provides some indication to the translation of Chinese classic works.