A Contrastive Analysis On Translation Of Bird Images In Shi Jing And The Realization Of The Xing Technique-a Cultural Perspective

Shi Jing is a Chinese classic which has a profound impact on the development of Chinese literature. The extensive reference to the ancient customs and to related natural environment makes it an encyclopedia of ancient Chinese folk culture, and the unique techniques employed add to its radiance as a literary gem. Those techniques and folk culture are closely related with the former being rooted in the later, as is especially evidenced by the technique of xing (evocation or association, namely, to start a song by evoking images that seem quite apart from the central subject but actually associate with the rest lines).While this epic is introduced to the western world, the images representative of the folk culture and the techniques should not be ignored, nor be treated in isolation. This thesis attempts to demonstrate the significance of combining the two while doing the translation. To this end, bird images in lines using the xing technique in 23 poems are analyzed from a cultural perspective through contrasting Xu Yuanzhong's translation (2009) and James Legge's version (2014).It is concluded that whenever the image is ill represented, the xing lines fail to properly associate themselves with the rest lines, or to fulfill their evoking role. In addition to emphasizing the linkage between the image and the xing line, the author also summarizes the successful techniques employed by both translators to fully represent the images.