An Application Study Of The Three-Level Criteria Of Poetry Translation In The English Translation Of Children's Poetry In Ancient China

China,being a land of poetry from ancient times,definitely has a great number of studies on poetry translation,which followed the “Going global” strategy for Chinese cultural development.There has been a growing interest and increasing achievements in the study of poetry translation in recent years.However,there still exist some problems,like lacking research about poetry translation in children's poetry in ancient China,or lacking an overall guidance of systematic theories;or the researcher's theory is not well combined with his practice and so on.Thus,further studies should be conducted accordingly.It is not hard to find there is plenty of children's poetry in ancient China.More than any other poetry,children's poetry shows off its creative contents and literary skills,and there are countless children's poetry.However,most translators pay great attention to the adult's literature rather than children's poetry.Obviously,children's poetry is not so widespread and best-known as Tang poetry or Song ci-poetry in the English-speaking world.Taking examples mainly from Fifty Selected Children's Poetry in Ancient China:English Translation and Appreciation(??????????????????),this thesis applies the Three-Level Translation Criteria of poetry translation proposed by Dr.Wang Feng in the discussions about the translation criteria of children's poetry in ancient China,using documentary analysis method,comparative analysis,inductive and summary methods as research methods.It aims to guide and promote the theoretical and practical studies on the English translation of children's poetry in ancient China from a new perspective and with a systematic theory.This thesis consists of five chapters.Chapter One briefly introduces the research background,significance,research questions,research methods and structure of the thesis.Chapter Two is the literature review,provides the current status and characteristics of children's poetry in ancient China,the English translation of children's poetry and the criteria of poetry translation,and on the basis of former research,the challenges and development tendencies are summarized.Chapter Three as the theoretical framework introduces the origin,development and basic concepts of the Three-Level Translation Criteria of poetry translation and its applications in other poetry translation.Chapter Four is an application study of the Three-Level Criteria of poetry translation in children's poetry in ancient China.Chapter five concludes the main ideas and limitations of the research and provides suggestions for further studies.This thesis focuses on Dr.Wang Feng's Three-Level Translation Criteria of poetry translation and analyzes different translation versions of children's poetry in ancient China.It is found that the translator should not only master relevant translation skills,but also consider the special objects and poetic context of children's poetry.In addition to reproduce the formal beauty and musical beauty of metrical poetry,each specific criterion of beauty should be given different reproduction weights according to the different genres of poetry.Firstly,children's narrative poetry is relatively simpler than other genres of poetry and usually,the beauties of suggestiveness,diction and allusion do not exist in it,thus,they usually need not be considered as specialized criteria in the English translation of children's narrative poetry.Secondly,children's object-chanting poetry is centered on the beauties of emotion and image,thus,the translator needs to emphasize the two beauties.Thirdly,children's allegorical poetry revolves around the beauties of allusion,suggestiveness and diction,thus,such beauties should be represented too.After the comparison of different translation versions,the author of the thesis found that there are many advantages in the selected English translations,however,there are also problems as follows: firstly,a few translations are not concise enough;secondly,with images omitted or added,it is difficult to accurately convey the original poetic context of the poetry and so on.All in all,in translating children's poetry,at the macro-level,the criterion is Harmony;at the middle-level,the theory of “resemblance in style,sense and poetic context”;at the micro-level,the criteria of Eight Beauties.Based on these analyses,the author hopes to provide reference and suggestions for the translation studies of children's poetry in the future.