Schematic Analysis On The Translation Of Classical Chinese Poetry

Chinese classical poetry has a long history with the beauty of sense, sound andform. Some masterpieces are well known to every household in China and become thebright treasures in the world cultural heritage. As is known to all, translating Chineseclassical poetry is of a great difficulty. However, many China and foreign translatorsface the challenge squarely and devote their lives to the renderings. The translatingactivities on the Chinese ancient poems have lasted for up to one hundred years.Many scholars domestic and overseas have made researches on this issue, most ofwhich are target text oriented and concentrate on the translation effects throughcritical evaluation and demonstrative analysis. Previous scholars paid much attentionto the translator’s language performance and translation techniques rather than thetranslation process. This thesis, different from those previous studies, will approachthe translation of Chinese classical poetry from a new perspective---schema theory incognitive linguistics and probe into the similarities and differences between XuYuancong’s and Pound’s translation processes.Schema theory, as an important branch in cognitive linguistics, explains howreaders motivate the relevant schemata in brains and obtain or construct meaning frompre-existed knowledge and past experience. According to schema theory, the author ofthis thesis divides the translation process into two parts: the decoding process ofsource text and the re-encoding process of target text. The author tries to solve theseresearch questions: What are the similarities and differences between Xu Yuanchong’sand Pound’s schema possessions before translating? What are the differences whenXu Yuanchong and Pound deal with various schemata in the re-encoding process? Asthe subjects of cognition, how do they construct their individualized cognitive worlds?Through the review of Xu Yuanchong’s and Pound’s life experience, translation motives and thoughts, it is proved that both of them affirm the translatability ofChinese classical poetry and lay stress on the rendering of spirit. However, they havedifferent motives and ideas. Pound emphasizes on the decoding of images in order toconstruct American new poetics. Xu Yuanchong carefully decodes the sound, senseand form in the original poems in order to convey Chinese ancient culture. With thedetailed analysis of their re-encoding process on language, content and form schemata,the author finds that Pound sticks to his imagist principle and adopts the imagejuxtaposition,"absolute rhythm" and free verse style, while Xu Yuanchong tries hisbest to recover the original characteristics by preserving the images, antithesis, lengthof lines, level and oblique tones and rhythm. What’s more, it is discovered that both ofthem own the similar cognitive basis but unique cognitive worlds. The differences ofschemata in their minds lead to the formation of different cognitive worlds.