A Study Of Image Translation Actualization In The English Translation Of Wang Wei’s Poems From The Perspective Of Image Gestalt

An increasing number of scholars, both from domestic and foreign countries, lave focused their research on the English translation of Chinese classical poetry, especially Tang poetry. Wang Wei, known as "Poet Buddha", has been attracting considerable attention from many translators. However, most of the current researches center on one or some certain aspects of this poem, few have taken the poem as holistic unit. Image-G actualization theory, originating from psychological studies, has now been frequently adopted in the field of literary translation, especially that of classical Chinese poetry.The term "gestalt" originated in Germany, meaning "whole". Image-G actualization theory emphasizes the holistic quality of literary works and points out hat every piece of literary work is an image-G with a "scene-frame" structure which possesses certain Gestalt qualities, and literary translation is just a reproduction of original image-G and it includes two stages:the mental actualization and linguistic actualization of the image-G. Grounded on the model of image-G actualization in iterary translation, the process of translating Wang Wei’s poems is a progression of mage-G actualization. Through descriptive and comparative methods, this thesis ittempts to explore the progression of image-G actualization in translating Wang Wei’s poems by probing into the two stages of image-G actualization, i.e. mental actualization and linguistic actualization of image-G. The thesis is targeted at illustrating the progression of image-G actualization in translating his poems and giving guidance to translation practice so as to solve the problem that translators attach too much importance to the equivalence of individual elements without eproducing the holistic artistic image in translating process.This study is investigated in the light of the theory of image-G actualization ocusing on three aspects:a) whether the image is understood with a holistic view, b) whether the internal meaning and aesthetic effect of images are transferred successfully, c) whether the word-choosing and sentence-making are proper in image actualization, and whether the feelings of the poet is accurately conveyed if an isomorphic object exits.Based on the thorough analyses on the source text and target text, it is concluded that successful translation of the original poem is based on stimulating the image-G actualization, and that the outcomes of image-G actualization are that the gestalt qualities of the original are reproduced and high-quality renditions with aesthetic effects are constructed in order to convey the artistic significance of Wang Wei’s poems.