On English Translation Of Tang Poems From The Perspective Of Figure-ground Theory

Tang poetry is an indispensable part of world literature. Much efforthas been made to study Tang poetry and its English translation. Theprevious studies on English translation of Tang poetry are mainlyconducted from perspectives of aesthetics, comparison, and liguistics.However, they ignored the cognitive mechanism behind poetryappreciation and the nature of poetry translation. This paper is aimed toinvestigate these issues on the basis of Figure-Ground theory.Figure/Ground segregation was first introduced into psychology byRubin about a century ago and later was integrated into the framework ofperceptual organization. The perceptual field can be divided into twoparts: figure and ground. When used in linguistics, Figure/Groundrelationship is concerned with the locative relationship between objects inspace and that between events in time. Figure-Ground reversalcontributes a lot to the forceful aesthetic effects of poetry. Thus,Figure-Ground theory turns out to be an effective method for the analysisof poetry translation.This paper, based on Figure-Ground theory, first analyzes the twopoems, Deng Gao and Yue Xia Du Zhuo. Then their7English versionsare analyzed. The analyses of the poems are based on such an assumption:the translated version should linguistically reflect the cognitive model embodied in the original, which may be named “cognitive equivalence”.To put it another way, the linguistic Figure-Ground relationship in theoriginal should be preserved in their English translations. Following this,the best versions are chosen. It turns out that what are chosen in thispaper are in accordance with the common ideas of scholars on poetrytranslation. Thus, it comes to the conclusion that Figure-Ground theorycan provide a criterion for criticism of poetry translation and that poetrytranslation per se is the reconstruction of Figure-Ground.