"Faithfulness First" And "Resemblance In Form And Spirit"

As a celebrated scholar and translator, Jiang Feng has made outstanding contributions to the communication between Chinese and western culture as well as the construction of translation theory in our country. Many of his translations about poems of Shelly and Dickinson are even models for reference, however, due attention has not been paid to him. Few researchers conduct studies on Jiang Feng’s translation thoughts. Therefore, research in the field need to be extended.This thesis mainly studies and explores Jiang Feng’s translation thoughts summarized through his long-term translation practice, and adopts some views of Russian Formalism to demonstrate the rationality of his thoughts. Besides, the author presents their supplement and remedy to Formalism. The paper first introduces Jiang’s achievements in poetry translation, and presents retrospect of existing studies on Jiang’s poetry translation. Then the thesis makes a summarization on Jiang’s poetry translation thoughts, through conclusion from three aspects:his argument for poetry’s translatability, his thought on translator’s special identity and his core principle of poetry translation:"Faithfulness First, and "Resemblance in Form and Spirit". Finally, the author conducts an interpretation on the essence of his thoughts from the perspective of Russian Formalism.After studying Jiang’s translation views, we can find that Jiang insists that poetry is translatable. As far as the special identity of translator is concerned, Jiang declares that translator should be also a reader at the same time, and he or she should acquire a full comprehension on the original text and author. Essence of his thoughts lies on that "Faithfulness First, and "Resemblance in Form and Spirit". Also, Jiang Feng deems that in the process of translation,’faithfulness’ should be put into the first place, also he put emphasis on that "Resemblance in Spirit Realized through Resemblance in Form", and his final purpose is "to achieve Resemblance in Form and Spirit"His important views are of great guiding significance. Jiang Feng does not only attach great importance to the core principle, but also practice what he preaches, which supplies good example for poetry translation. Based on the theory advocated by Russian Formalists, we can find rationality of Jiang’s translation thoughts, which provides significant guidance value on poetry translation. Meanwhile, some of Jiang’s thoughts are important supplement and remedy to Formalism, for instance, his specific definition about’form’and’attention should be paid to both form and spirit or content’ which is more reasonable than the formalists’ replacing ’form’ and’ content’in traditional sense with ’procedure’ and’ content’This thesis enables us a more complete and thorough understanding of Jiang’s thoughts on poetry translation, particularly the interpretation of the essence or principle of his thoughts that "Faithfulness First", and "Resemblance in Form and Spirit" provides revelation on poetry translation practice.