A Study Of Dan Murphy’s English Translation Of Hai Zi’s Poems Based On Ezra Pound’s Three Principles

This thesis is an initial attempt to study Dan Murphy’s English translation of Hai Zi’s poems based on the three principles of poetry composing proposed by Ezra Pound during the Imagist Movement.One of the representatives of the new generation of Chinese poets in the late 20 th century, Hai Zi enjoys a unique status in the history of Chinese poetry. Exploring the significance of human existence and pregnant with his solicitude for human living conditions, Hai Zi’s poems are more than romantic lyrics and transcend the literary trends of his time. American scholar Dan Murphy is the first and the only one who has translated Hai Zi’s poems into English. In 2010 his translations were published as Over Autumn Rooftops by Host Publications in New York so as to give back the international prestige that Hai Zi should have enjoyed as a poet. Up to now, no research or even any comment has been conducted on Dan Murphy’s translations.On the other side of the ocean in the 20 th century, as a controversial celebrated figure, Ezra Pound led a literary movement for nearly one century in both America and Europe, making extraordinary and pioneering contributions to the literary world. Besides, Pound conducted a thorough revolution towards the traditional poetry and established the standards of modern free verse. Hence, he is widely honored as “the father of the free verse in English”. As Mencius puts, “a spring of water gushes out day and night, fills every hole, and then advances onto the sea”. Pound’s poetry and his poetry composing theories are exhaustless water sources that have profoundly influenced on the American and English poetry.Poetry is a gem in the treasure of Chinese culture and both of its translation and transmission have gone through many centuries. Nonetheless, scholars are inclined to attach great significance to the translation of Chinese classical poetry whereas little attention is paid to the translation of Chinese New Poetry. In recent years, scholars and poets both in China and overseas have launched a series of translation activities on New Poetry as the echoes of “going out” of Chinese culture. However, there still exists a huge gap between the growing number of English translations of modern/contemporary Chinese poetry and a lack of in-depth and valuable investigations into the topic in question.Literary translation is generally regarded as a type of re-creation, and translation of poetry is closely related to poetry composing. In Pound’s point of view, the translation principles are indeed composing principles. And this thesis initially attempts to study the translation principles derived from Pound’s three principles of poetry composing, including sincerity: direct representation of image to rebuild artistic conception; conciseness: on lexical and syntactic level; as well as rhythmicity: natural flow of language. The author of this thesis develops three poetry translation principles from Ezra Pound’s three principles of poetry composing before performing an analysis of Dan Murphy’s translations of Hai Zi’s poems in the hope of laying a theoretical foundation for translating Chinese New Poetry.