Ezra Pound’’S Translation Thoughts Reflected In Cathay

Ever since the publication of Cathay in 1915, it has received a storm of praise as well as adverse criticism from literary critics and translators. Many critics believe that without enough knowledge of the original language, a translation can not achieved. In fact, due to the ignorance of Fenollosa’s manuscript and Pound’s poetic thoughts and translation philosophy, these conclusions on Cathay are somewhat lacking in perspective. This simple judgment tends to blur the true image of the poems.The author aims to probe into Pound’s poetic philosophy and translation thoughts to find out the elements which determine the translating strategies in Cathay. Most importantly, by analyzing these translations, a new conclusion is achieved that linguistic faithfulness is no longer the only criteria to evaluate the achievements of a translated text. Translation is valuable by importing new elements which may be assimilated and by resorting to the essentials which have been forgotten in traditional literary methods.