A Study On The Image Transplantation In Xu Yuanchong’s Translation Of Li Qingzhao’s Poetry From The Perspective Of Palmer’s Cultural Linguistics

Li Qingzhao is one of the most renowned poets in China’s long history, and her literary creation as well as the poet herself has attracted many researches from different perspectives in different fields. Changes in Li Qingzhao’s personal life and her time have exerted great influence on the creation of her poems in both contents and emotions. Image, as an essential element of poetry, presents and conveys the poet’s sentimentality and connotation of the poem. Therefore, imagery is a critical factor in understanding and studying Li Qingzhao’s poetry. Palmer’s cultural linguistics sets image as the core concept of his theory and holds that the construction of imagery is based on two crucial elements:culture and personal history. As is mentioned, Li Qingzhao’s life experiences matter much in her imagery application and construction. In this sense, Palmer’s cultural linguistics provides theoretical basis for the analysis and comprehension of Li Qingzhao’s imagery. Furthermore, Palmer has developed four principles for image understanding in his theory. It is found that three of them are applicable in comprehending Li Qingzhao’s translated images, namely, principle of perceptual equivalence, principle of spatial equivalence and principle of structural equivalence. Therefore, analyzing translated images within the framework of the three principles to see whether the translation offers target readers the possibility of abiding by these principles provides a new perspective to evaluate the appropriateness of image transplantation.On the basis of Palmer’s cultural linguistics and Xu Yuanchong’s translation of Li Qingzhao’s poems, the thesis analyzes Xu’s translated images and concludes the effect of his image transplantation. Based on Palmer’s understanding on image, the thesis has conducted a systematic classification of Li Qingzhao’s images, and evaluated Xu’s translation within the framework of the three principles. It is found that although some of the original images have not been fully reproduced, most of them are appropriately conveyed and transplanted. Consequently, the thesis has concluded four effects of Xu’s image transplantation:picture integration, emotion transference, culture transmission and connotation loss.