A Study On The Reproduction Of The Images Of Beauty In The English Versions Of Shi Jing From The Perspective Of Imagology

Being the first anthology of poetry in Chinese literature, Shi Jing is the most shinning gem in the history of Chinese poetry as it presents the cultural charm lasting from the early Zhou Dynasty to the middle of Spring and Autumn Period and also produces numerous humanistic images so that readers can not only enjoy the essence of Chinese traditional culture but, more importantly, are able to imagine and appreciate these images. The images of women have ever been a subject that cannot be ignored in researches on literary works. As for Shi Jing, there are more than one hundred poems involving images of women, through which all aspects of life during that period are manifested, including culture, literature, traditional aesthetics and Confucius thinking. Therefore, Shi Jing is a miniature of the image of ancient China and the images of beauty are one of the representative images of ancient China.The translation of Shi Jing is not only under the drive of transmitting this Chinese literary work but also aims at presenting Chinese traditional culture to the world. Admitting that there are many achievements on this regard, translators of Shi Jing cannot represent the images as the original poets did and the images in translated versions are “new” as deviations are unavoidable in their translating process. These deviations caused by translators’ ignorance, addition, exaggeration or moderation are worth exploring. Thus, this thesis, based on Imagology related to images, takes Xu Yuanchong’s and Legge’s English versions of Shi Jing as illustrations to analyze the factors disturbing translators’ translating process, to study to what extent the reproduced images deviate from the original ones, and at the same time to presents to readers the primary images of beauty as well as the underlined cultural factors under those images.