Recreating Musicality In Translatining Chinese Classical Poetry From Persepective Of Creative Translation

The phonetic rhetorical figures in Chinese classical poetry bear muchsignificance in adding to musicality of Chinese classical poetry. Manyscholars and translators have concentrated on recreation of musicality in C-Etranslation of Chinese poetry. However, researches on translation of Chinesephonetic rhetorical figures in terms of transmitting musicality of Chineseclassical poetry are neither comprehensive nor intensive.The paper sets target on recreating the musicality of Chinese phoneticrhetorical figures in translation of classical poetry from the perspective oftheory of creative translation by Xu Yuanzhong. Creative translationhighlights the translator’s creativity in literary translation, and advocatesrecreating the stylistic beauty of original text by making fully use of artistictarget language expressions. Based on the theory, the research carries on acomparative study between English and Chinese phonetic rhetorical figuresto find out the feasibility of translating musicality through English phoneticrhetorical figures; then discover the practical realization of musicalitythrough artistic English phonetic rhetorical figures by means of analyzing thenumerous translation cases in which the musicality of Chinese phoneticrhetorical figures is well reflected through the creative translation work bythose eminent translators including James Legge, Burton Watson, ArthurWaley and Xu Yuanchong etc. The research data to be analyzed comes from classic Chinese and English poetry as well as translation versions by famoustranslators. From comparative analysis, the research comes to followingconclusions: the language vividness of Chinese nisheng can be recreated byEnglish onomatopoeia, alliteration, and repetition; the rhyming effects ofshuangsheng and dieyun can be recreated by alliteration, assonance,consonance, and end-rhyme; the sound beauty of twined syllables of dieyincan be reproduced by repetition and alliteration; the lost musicality of acertain Chinese phonetic rhetorical figure can be compensated by applyingdifferent English phonetic rhetorical figures to recreate another aspect ofmusicality. The research will contribute to the relevant researches on C-Etranslation of musicality in Chinese classical poetry, and can be a referencefor further studies on poetry translation, especially translating the stylisticbeauty.