On Quality Assessment Of Poetry Translation Based On Si Xianzhu's Translation Quality Assessment Model

Translation quality assessment is one of the core topics in the field of translation studies,and the poetry translation quality assessment has aroused scholars' persistent exploration based on three theoretical models,Poetic Model,Linguistic Model and Cultural Model.According to Halliday's systemic-functional grammar,the foreign scholar House has put forward a systematic translation quality assessment model by integrating macro-perspective,micro-perspective,qualitative and quantitative perspectives.However,in China,in terms of the research of translation quality assessment,domestic scholars have mostly concentrated on introduction and analysis of foreign translation quality assessment models.Based on House's translation quality assessment model,Si Xianzhu has constructed English-Chinese translation quality assessment model.Si Xianzhu selects different text types as corpse to verify his model and then revises his model accordingly.Compared with Si Xianzhu's original model,the revised model is more systematic,operable and objective in parameters and procedures.Si Xianzhu's model shows a relatively strong applicability to different texts,but the model is seldom adopted in poetry translation quality assessment.Therefore,from the perspective of linguistic model,this study uses a case study based on an ancient Chinese poem Song of a Pipa Player by Bai Juyi and the subjects are the two translated versions,one by Xu Yuanchong and the other co-translated version by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang.Based on,Si Xianzhu's translation quality assessment model,this study adopts the method of quantitative and qualitative analysis to assess the two translated versions.This study aims to explore the applicability of the model to poetry translation,and if the model is not applicable,the study will modify the model in order to adapt to the poetry translation quality assessment.This study expects to make some contributions to translation quality assessment,specifically,to make poetry translation quality assessment more scientific and give some theoretical guidance to poetry translation quality assessment.The research finds that Xu's version adopts the form of Alexandrine and his language is more vivid,colorful and poetic,while Yang's co-translated version uses the form of prose and the language in the version is more faithful and flexible.According to Si Xianzhu's model,at the level of clause,some deviations are caused by Xu's consideration of the beauty in sound,sense and form.In terms of ideational meaning,there are 16 ideational deviations,among which are 6 positive deviations and 10 negative deviations.In contrast,there are 9 ideational deviations in Yang's co-translated version,among which are' 2 positive deviations and 7 negative deviations.In terms of interpersonal meaning,the mood in Xu's version is closer to the source poem,while in Yang's co-translated version,there are 19 declarative sentences fewer than the source poem and the 4 interrogative sentences in the source poem are not reflected in Yang's co-translated version.In general,Xu's version has 17 interpersonal deviations,that is,7 positive deviations and 10 negative deviations respectively.In contrast,there are 15 interpersonal deviations in Yang's co-translated version,including 5 positive deviations and 10 negative deviations.At the level of text,both translated versions have almost achieved equivalence to the source poem.Through the analysis,there are 1 and 2 negative equivalences in Xu's version and Yang's co-translated version respectively.After assessing the two translated versions of Song of a Pipa Player based on Si Xianzhu's translation quality assessment model,we find that the model shows its applicability to the assessment of poetry translation quality in sense to a certain extent.However,restricted by the poetic features of poetry,the model should be modified for poetry translation quality assessment.To be more specific,at first,in the process of sense assessment,poetic features should be given due consideration,such as sound,sense,form and cultural background on the basis of bottom-up and top-down analysis.In addition,in order to improve poetry translation quality assessment model,besides the sense equivalence,the equivalence in the other two dimensions—sound and form,should also be given due attention.Thus,the three dimensions should be considered in the final comprehensive translation quality assessment.