The Comparison Between Xu Yuanchong And Stephen Owen's Translation On Wang Wei's Poems

With the consistent ongoing of China,Chinese culture is attracting more and more attention from all over the world.Chinese classical poetry has gained more and more recognition in the western culture,so many poets' works have been translated into many languages.Nowadays,cultural studies have gained new vitality in the study of literary translation,which derived from the fact that domestic translators have turned their attention from the studies of literary translation into the combination between them and cultural thinking.Wang Wei is a bright star in the history of Chinese literature.His poems attracted the attention from modern and contemporary translators by his unique poetic talent,painting talent and music talent.This thesis presents the similarities and differences between Chinese and Western literature and culture from the translators and the translations to analyze the causes of the different thinking by comparing Xu Yuanchong's and Stephen Owen's English translation of Wang Wei's poems.This thesis contains five parts including the introduction part,the main content of the thesis and the conclusion part.The introduction part covers following aspects: the research background,the research actuality,the research significance,the innovation point,the research method and the thoughts.This part fully not only clarifies the basis and significance of the topic,but also presents the logic of the text and provides the framework for the thesis.The first part makes a comparative research on the translator subjectivity of Xu Yuanchong and Stephen Owen.First of all,the two translators have the same aim in translation,that is,to spread Chinese classical poetry and flourish world literature and culture.Secondly,the translation theories used by the two translators to achieve the translation purposes are inevitably different because of the differences between different countries.Xu Yuanchong managed his own thoughts in translation to convey Chinese culture.Stephen Owen distinguished the different styles of Chinese poetry by English stylistic standards.Therefore,there are some differences in their translations.The third part makes a contrastive research on the English translation of Wang Wei's poems.Firstly,the author make a contrast in the choice of words,including the title of poems,the content of poems and the choice of words in poetry.From the comparison,we can find that the translation of Xu Yuanchong is more inclined to free translation.Stephen Owen pays more attention to word-to-word translation.Secondly,comparing and analyzing the similarities and differences between the two versions in three aspects(spatial arrangement,color representation,painting movement)from theaspect of reproduction of the artistic features of the English translation about Wang Wei's poems,Xu Yuanchong's translation method is more flexible.Moreover,his content expressed in the translation tends to express the inner beauty of the original poems.In contrast,Stephen Owen pays more attention to convey the literal meaning of the original poems.The translated poems tend to retain the literal features of the original poems.Finally,the author compare the two translating versions from the reappearance of Zen state in the English translation of Wang Wei's poems.The differences between the two versions are shown through the selection of Zen vocabularies,the reappearance of Zen images and the reappearance degree of Zen state.The fourth part analyzes the reasons for the differences between Xu Yuanchong's and Stephen Owen's translating versions.One reason is the differences of national cultures,that is,the differences of world view and methodology at the way of thinking between the East and the West.The fact that Xu Yuanchong and Stephen Owen take their own national culture as the foundations leads to different versions,which are embodied in their translation theory,translation thought and their respective translation works.The conclusion part summarizes the full text and explains that there are many differences between the two versions.Drawing from the above reasons,the main reason for the differences is the different way of thinking in the eastern and western cultures.