A Report On The Translation Of A Zen Wave-Basho's Haiku & Zen (Chapters 7-12)

This is a report on the English-Chinese translation of the seventh to twelve chapters of A ZEN WAVE---BASHO-'S HAIKU & ZEN by an famous American Zen teacher,Robert Baker Aitken.The selected work by Robert Aitken is an faithfully and systematically organized combination of analysis and comment of Japanese haiku,which has preciously contained some of the well-known and also some barely-known-by-the-world haiku mainly written by Matsuo Basho-,and by other famous Japanese and Europe poets as its materials and references as well.Besides,the book uses evident and convinced koan(real stories from life)as support for its theory.Basically,this work is believed to be a very helpful and supporting material to the world of Japanese haiku and Zen theory.The content is well organized inside in terms of analysis and comment of the poem.The analysis part includes lexical meaning,form,and the general meaning of the poem as a whole while the comment basically focus on how the simply stated words express profound meaning of Zen or in other words,Japanese Buddhism,for the theme of haiku is generally believed to be deeply related to Japanese Buddhism.The report is surely to be academically and artistically valued regarding the apparently meaningful strike of cultural power it involved.The haiku involved in the chapters of this report are highly representative,some of them are even rarely exposed to the lights which makes the work selected a highly appreciated material into Basho-'s haiku and Japanese Zen theory.And because of this the translation process is consequently much more of a challenging as well as growth-oriented one as three has been different languages and cultures involved.translation strategy is also accordingly and thoughtfully picked up and applied in two directions in order to produce a faithful and proper culture-loaded as well as a expressive work while the all-time-right principle of “faithfulness,expressiveness and elegance ” by Yan-fu has been carefully applied during the whole translation process.In an attempt of delivering a natural and faithful translation to the readers,the Communicative Translation Theory promoted by Peter Newmark(1916.4.12~2011.7.9)has been carefully applied in the process of translation while there are certain circumstances the Semantic Translation Theory(also by Peter Newmark)also be used for bettering and balancing the translation.On the other hand,regarding translation of Japanese-style poem(the so-called haiku)into Chinese,the theory based on Prof.Jin Zhong's “Two/Three-Five/Seven-Words” method---the “one phase one line” method,which is developed and prompted by the author,would be used during the whole translation process in the lights of the principle of “ faithfulness,expressiveness and elegance” for the purpose of producing natural and expressive translation of haiku.After considerable researches and comparisons with other translation methods regarding the translation of Japanese haiku,it turns out that the “one phrase one line” module(which can be generalized as “Two/Three-Five/Seven-Words” type counting in Chinese scripts)stands out in keeping the style and the volume of content with the original.This is the reason why the “one phrase one line” is highly appreciated and employed in this translation practice in terms of translating haiku.For the record,the “one phrase one line” module basically stays with the “Two/Three-Five/Seven-Words” in the translation of haiku though,other methods such as free-style poetic translation,haiku-based Five-Seven-Five-Words poetic translation,and etc.will be taken into account given the specific need for delivering the appearance and essence of the original work to its readers.The report basically consists of five parts including the description of the translation task with the background information,the introduction of the source material,purpose and significance of this translation task,and the brief introduction of the institutional content of this report as the first part.The second part covers the preparation before the practice which includes which work to be translated,what kind of translating strategies to be applied and the schedule of the translation.The third part is about the translating process describing how the translator manages to understand the material,how to put language in order for the translation and description of the key part as well as the difficult part encountered during the translation process.The forth part is the focus of this report that offering detailed description and analysis of the translation process with examples and analytical theories.The fifth would be that of the translator's summary about this mission.