On The Translation Of Tang Poetry From The Perspective Of Post-colonialism

In the21st century, along with the development of economic globalization, more communications have been carried out between different countries and regions. People across the world hold an opener and more tolerant attitude towards foreign cultures. They are willing to learning more about foreign cultures and explore the differences between foreign culture and local culture. Nevertheless, in the past, western culture with British and American culture as representatives have for a long time been in the dominating position. When introducing works from weak cultures, they would adopt strategies, so as to make the translation conform to the mainstream values of the dominant culture. But this manipulation will weaken the under-privileged culture and as a result, the target readers have no opportunity to get in touch with the unique features of foreign cultures. Tang Poetry, which has a variety of forms and styles, is the gem of Chinese culture, reflecting the heyday of the development of Chinese classical poetry. Tang Poetry is still widely read today. Through the translation practice of many famous scholars both at home and abroad, Tang Poetry is widely spread across the world. However, in the process of Tang Poetry translation, there are also misreading, mistranslation and omissions, embodying the manipulation of privileged culture towards under-privileged culture.Post-colonialism is a trend in western academic circle since the1970s, which at first mainly focused on the discourse relations between colonizing countries and the colonized countries. The contemporary Post-colonialism research concentrates more on problems like cultural differences, cultural identity, cultural awareness, etc., and criticizes the cultural hegemony of western countries. Among the various translation theories, the Post-colonial translation theory pays attention to the effect of a strong culture to a weak culture in the process of translation. Post-colonial translation theory serves as an important supplement of the traditional translation theories and comes up with a new perspective for translation studies and practice. This paper is rendered to have an analysis of the Tang Poetry translation works of Xu Yuanchong and Ezra Pound from the perspective of Post-colonialism. The translated texts are chosen from300Tang Poems of Xu Yuanchong and Cathay of Ezra Pound. The analysis is done in three aspects, namely translation purpose, translation principle and translation strategy. Meanwhile, the transmission of culture and images between the privileged culture and under-privileged culture will also be elaborated.The findings are as follows:1. Post-colonial translation theory can be applied into the study of Tang Poetry translation. This theory examines translation behaviors under different historical conditions. On the basis of an understanding of the power difference existing in different cultures, the theory helps to shed light on the power struggle between different cultures hidden between the lines of the translation.2. It is reflected in the study that in comparison with Xu Yuanchong’s translation purpose, which is to introduce and spread Chinese traditional culture and let the whole world understand China better, Ezra Pound’s translation purpose is not just an approach to get better cross-cultural communication, but also a tool to get social intervention and arouse change in the western literature field; in comparison with Xu Yuanchong’s pursuit of beauty so as to show the world the authentic Chinese literature and expand the influence of Tang Poetry and Chinese literature across the world, Ezra Pound’s creative translation lacks of faithfulness but focuses more on images, which serves Pound’s ultimate goal of making innovations of modern poetry; in comparison with Xu Yuanchong’s translation concerning cultural contents, Pound has omitted intentionally or translated creatively the cultural elements involved in the original poems, which is a demonstration of his cultural manipulation and also the control and hegemony of the privileged culture towards the under-privileged culture.Through this research, the author aims to provide a new perspective for Tang Poetry translation and draw people’s attention to deal with the cultural differences between source language and target language.