A Study On Zheng Zhenduo’s Translation Theory And Practice

Zheng Zhenduo was one of the main advocates and pioneering figures during the MayFourth New Cultural Movement and New Literature Movement. His research touched upon alot of fields including literature, art, archeology, popular literature, documentation editing andsorting and made great achievements on the above subjects. Besides, he was a prominenttranslator, translating a number of excellent foreign literature works, many of which were fullof exploring and enlightening spirit. These works reflected his remarkable translating styleand characters. More importantly, he posed plenty of pertinent and insightful viewpoints onmany aspects of translation theories. He demonstrated the translatability of literature works;further explained the purpose and function of translation; investigated the issues on theresponsibility of translator, unification of the literary terms, the relationship betweentranslation and creation, retranslation and Europeanization of language; discussed and furtherdeveloped Yan Fu’s Xin Da Ya theory. He was the first to introduce Tytler’s three principles oftranslation into China and make some valuable comment on it, one of the first persons tostudy and summarize the history of whole modern literary translation. These distinguishedtranslation views have positive influence on the process of translation development, whichinstructs the translation activity even today.Stray Birds and The Crescent Moon are Zheng Zhenduo’s excellent and highlyrepresentative translation works, which are both from the hands of Indian poet RabindranathTagore. The perspective of the poetry is unique and innovative, presented diversely andeclecticly in content in the form of verses. The poem is brief but meaningful, containing awealth of philosophy. Zheng Zhenduo’s translation works of Stray Birds and The CrescentMoon are not only faithful to the original in the content and form, but also convert the beautyof the original art perfectly into the translation work, which reflect his translation theory fully.Therefore, it is necessary to explore and generate the relationship between the translationviews and his specific translation practice through these two translation works so as toconfirm Zheng Zhenduo’s translation viewpoints on the practical level. At last, the thesis analyzes and discusses the overlapping points of Zheng Zhenduo’stranslation theory and modern western mainstream translation views. In the contemporary, asthe intersection and blending of Chinese and western translation theory, to create translationtheory system suited China’s national conditions, consistent with the Chinese language andculture; it is not only to "absorb" the western translation theory, but also to carry forward thetraditional and excellent Chinese translation thought. So, as for the research on translators,especially on the traditional outstanding translators like Zheng Zhenduo, more attentionshould be given in order to obtain further study.