A Systematic Comparison Of Three English Translations Of Mao Zedong’s Poetry

Along with the continuous globalization and localization of society, economy,culture and arts, the practice of Chinese-English poetry translation has been developingrapidly. Since the1950s, over20English versions of Mao Zedong’s poetry have beenpublished. Due to the difficulty of Chinese-English poetry translation itself and thediversity of adopted translation approaches, however, Chinese-English poetrytranslation practice is now still suffering from a tendency of blindly adoptingtranslation strategies without considering the relationship between text and context.With the incessant growth of contemporary translation studies, the study ofChinese-English poetry translation has been making remarkable progress. Within it, thestudy of the English translation of Mao Zedong’s poetry since the1990s has madenotable achievements. Because of the complexity of Chinese-English poetry translationstudy and the variety of translation research methodologies, however, Chinese-Englishpoetry translation research is still handicapped by an inclination of partially discussingtranslation methods without investigating the relationship between text and context.In view of the achievements and problems in the practice and study ofChinese-English poetry translation especially the English translation of Mao Zedong’spoems, in the light of Karl W. von Humboldt’s Linguistic World Outlook and FriedrichSchleiermacher and Wilhelm Dilthey’s Hermeneutics, on the basis of van Dijk’sDiscourse Analysis and other systematic linguistic theories and methods, and throughan integrated methodology incorporating theoretical illustration and case analysis,therefore, the present study attempts to make a systematic comparison of three Englishversions of Mao Zedong’s poetry, i.e., the1972Harper version, the1976officialversion, and the2006Xu Yuanchong’s version, at the macro-and micro-textual andcontextual levels so as to systematically describe and explain the similarity anddifferences in the translation strategies (views, theories, methods and techniques) adopted in the three translations.Results of the study demonstrate that, among the Harper version, the officialversion, and the Xu’s version of Mao’s poems, there are both similarities anddifferences on the level of macrostructure of text (in terms of tune names, forms andgenres of poem) and on the level of microstructure of text (in terms of phonological,lexical and syntactic features). In terms of its relationship to the Chinese original, theHarper version is the least equivalent to the original; the official version is the secondequivalent; and the Xu’s version is the most equivalent, being as poetic as the original.Results of the study also show that, among the Harper version, the official version, andthe Xu’s version, there are both similarities and disparities on the level of context(especially in terms of such external manipulative factors as historical or socio-culturalbackgrounds, translator, publisher and target readers). The contextual forces determinethe translators’ choice of such translation strategies as domestication and foreignization,which lead to the textual similarities and differences among the three English versionsof Mao’s poetry.This study may be both practically and academically relevant to the Englishtranslation of Mao’s poems in particular and Chinese poetry in general. Practically, thisstudy may help to improve Chinese poetry translation practice by avoiding thetendency of adopting translation strategies without considering the relationshipbetween text and context. Academically, it may compensate for the inadequacy in thestudy of the English translation of Mao’s poems or Chinese poetry by preventing thetendency of studying translation strategies without investigating the relationshipbetween text and context.