Research On Guo Moruo’s Poetry Translation

In the1850s, Chinese translation of English poems appears in China which creates aprecedent of Chinese literary translation. This precedent is earlier than Lin Shu’s translation,who translated depending on other’s interpretation. It only takes eighty years from that time tothe1920s, the first high tide of the poetry translation. It is indispensable with the history ofChinese translation that the developing process and achievements of poetry translation.Many people have translated Shelley’s poems, among them, Zha Liangzheng, Jiang Fengand Guo Moruo obtaining the biggest success. Until now, their translation versions are spreadwidely. In terms of these three versions, Guo Moruo’s translation version gets the mostattention, so the paper takes his translation as research subject.There are the following reasons: first, Shelley was the first foreign writer who took GuoMoruo’s much effort during the May4thmovement, and his influence on Guo Moruo’sthought can not be ignored. Shelley’s aesthetic work Defence of Poem had great influence onGuo Moruo’s early aesthetic thought. Second, Shelley was admired greatly by Guo Moruoand Guo praised Shelley as the “true poet”. And the charm and thought of Shelley’s poemsdeeply attracted Guo Moruo. Third, both Shelley and Guo Moruo were in the age ofrevolution and had similar family background, living background and emotional background.Qn this similar backgroud, Guo Moruo can understand Shelley’s poems well. Only if thetranslator knows the ture meaning of the original, he can control it and translate it well. Tothis extent, Guo Moruo truly got the aim: during the translation of Shelley’s poems, GuoMoruo looked himself as Shelley. In others words, the translator and the author are a entity.For translation theory, Guo Moruo has a special view. In his idea, the most important thing is reproducing the original’s inner meaning, not mere conveying the surface meaning ofthe words and sentences. To reach this aim, there are many difference between his translationversion and original poems. So some people have a opinion that he translated at random. Thepaper first makes a systemic analysis of his translation theory, then analyses from threeaspects: poetic form, poetic content and poetic image whether he translated at random,whether his translation The Selected Poems of Shelley is successful or not.The analyze uses methods of descriptive analysis and contrastive. The demonstrationmainly begins from three aspects: poetic form, poetic content and poetic imagery. In details,poetic form includes three points: rhyme, rhythm, lines and stanzas; poetic content includessemantic level, syntactic level and lexical level; poetic imagery includes figurative images,symbolic images and descriptive images.After analysis, the paper will get the conclusion from poetic form, content and imagethat he did not translate at random, all his changes after his careful consideration and study ofboth the original language and target language. His translation is suitable for the Chineseculture and reading habits.