De-canonization Of The Classics In Translation

Classic poetry collection, Stray Birds, authored by Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), was originally translated into Chinese by Zheng Zhenduo(1898-1958) in 1915 and enjoyed widely support in China. Different from him whose version is well acclaimed, Feng Tang's translation of Stray Birds in 2015, has get tons of criticisms from various people-it has sparked a huge debate about academic translation, which a large number of mass groups involved, such as mainstream media People's Daily, all ages of civilian population, and representatives from the elite. Under the manipulation of mass media, most of the public are shocked by his "shielded eight poems", and overlook the other poems in Feng Tang's translation. Eventually, under such a public pressure, Feng Tang's translations were forced to "off shelves", resulting in a unique Feng Tang Translation Phenomenon.In the age of popular culture, both public aesthetic taste and classic works are faced with an awkward dilemma:The public aesthetic taste has been criticized, and the public reading rate decreases year after year. Under such circumstance, the book publishers are infamous and accused of kitsch focus on best-selling novels or popular Internet novels. Ordinary public no longer focuses on classic works, and the classics have developed into "the collector's goal, the artist's display, and nostalgic people's sustenance". Though classic literature, especially poetry slowly fades out of the public concern, Feng Tang's translation, with his bold rewrite, makes the public's focus shift to classic literature again.The author of this thesis carries out studies from the perspective of popular culture theory, Firstly, a comparative analysis tells the differences between Feng Tang's translation and Zheng Zhenduo's version. With the translation theory of visible translator, Feng Tang changes the original into rhymed poems in brief and popular languages. Secondly, the author finds out that in order to accomplish the goal of de-canonizing the classic, Feng Tang takes some strategies in three aspects:1) his star translator identity.2) symbolic language.3) popular aesthetic factors. Finally, this thesis points out some causes of Feng Tang's failure. The influence of the classic plays the most important role, while the prejudiced reports of mass media lead to the public's disapproval.The translations of Feng Tang do have some deficiencies, but it cannot offset the academic value of his whole poems. What's more? Feng Tang's translation gives us an example for de-canonizing the classic in popular culture age.