On English Translation Of Images In Shi Jing

Shi Jing is one of the earliest collections of poems in the world and the most dazzling pearl of Chinese literature. The translation of such a masterpiece is not only a very important way for westerners to understand and appreciate Chinese culture, but also the academic pursuit of many scholars at home and abroad. Image is an intrinsic concept in Chinese literature, and the beauty of Chinese classical poetry is thought to be reflected by the beauty of images. Images in Shi Jing originate from the life of Chinese ancestors. Some convey original cultural connotations, some bear ethical and moral meanings, and others are aesthetic images that express the aesthetic sentiments and thoughts of the poet. Shi Jing poets employ three methods to express the aesthetic feelings:narration, comparison and association, by which isolated images in one poem are combined together to create special aesthetic effects. This thesis is designed to make a comprehensive analysis on the English translation of images in Shi Jing. Through methods of comparative study, literature research, case study and text analysis, the author intends to study the images in Shi Jing from an aesthetic point of view.Translational aesthetics is the combination of translation studies and aesthetics. It is to study translation with the aesthetic approach, which is to reveal the aesthetics source of translation, to reveal the special significance of aesthetics to translation and to probe into the scientific and artistic nature of translation from the aesthetic perspective. Therefore it is an appropriate perspective to study the English translation of Shi Jing images. The aesthetic subject and aesthetic object are two of these basic notions in translational aesthetics. Concerning the present thesis, the aesthetic object is the images in Shi Jing in the source text and the target text, while the aesthetic subject is the translator, to be specific, the four translators with whom the author conducts a case study. This thesis falls into five chapters:Chapter1first explains the motives of the author to conduct this research and points out the author’s objectives; then gives a general account of the current research background at home and abroad; the author also make clear the focuses of this thesis and the difficulties encountered in the research process.Chapter2is the literature review, which is further divided into three subdivisions. The author first briefly introduces the history of English translations of Shi Jing, summarizes the complete English versions and categorizes those versions according to the four factors related to the translator. Then the author compares Chinese and western images with a survey on image theory in Chinese poetic study and an introduction to western imagism. The subsequent part is the analysis on Shi Jing images from three aspects:features, classification and aesthetic expression.Chapter3is an investigation on Shi Jing image translation. The author first illustrates the translatability of poetic images and points out the difficulties in the translation of Shi Jing images. In the following sections, the author adopts the approach of translational aesthetics to conduct case studies according to the aesthetic subjects, which is, the translators—respectively Arthur Waley, Ezra Pound, Wang Rongpei&Ren Xiuhua.In Chapter4, the author illustrates the general principle and the basic means of aesthetic representation, and analyzes aesthetic objects—three famous Shi Jing poems accordingly. At last, the author summarizes the translation strategies applied by image translators and come up with four tactics:reversion, revision, replacement and annotation.Chapter5concludes the present thesis.