Upon The Poetic Reception Of The English Versions Of Tao Te Ching In Light Of Gestalt Theory

The Tao Te Ching is short and succinct,just five thousand words but containing profound wisdom of philosophy.Many ideas in the book have had a profound impact on both Chinese and Western cultures since it came out.There are more than one hundred English translations in the world,and different versions have their own advantages.This paper explores the translators' poetic reception based on the Gestalt theory during the process of translation.Gestalt theory emphasizes the integrity of perceptual experience and behavior,and advocates the study of psychological cognition as a whole.The literary text is a gestalt image with completeness and integrity.The translator uses his cognitive processing to map the imagery of the original form into the target language so as to reproduce the original information and aesthetic experience in translation fully.This paper adopts the Gestalt theory as the research paradigm and combines the relevant knowledge of cognitive linguistics to analyze the psychological mechanism of the translator in the process of conveying the original Gestalt image,and discusses the translators' strategies with concrete examples.This paper attempts to analyze the translators' psychological mechanism in the translation process from the initial period,development period and maturity period.First of all,based on the holistic principle of the Gestalt theory and the graphic background principle the author tries to analyze how the translator can grasp the original text in the initial period to form a complete image of the Gestalt.Then,in the development period,the author attempts to interpret how the translator's psychological pressure is gradually reduced through the calling structure to fill or retain the uncertainty of meaning and blank in the original text to reproduce the original image of the Gestalt image.In the end,this paper attends to explore the fusion of the two heterogeneous existences of Chinese and Western poetics in maturity period.After the macro analysis,the author adopts the text reading method and the comparative research method and applies the main principles of Gestalt theory to analyze the English translations of Waley and Gu Zhengkun from the three aspects of cultural loaded words,image and philosophical interpretation.The analysis shows that the Gestalt research paradigm helps the translator to grasp the format of the originaltext from the choice of vocabulary,the cohesion and coherence of the text,and the overall style of the language,thus effectively conveying the profound philosophical connotation and the beauty of the linguistic form.Meanwhile,it is hoped that this paper can make a little bit contribution to the study of the English translation of the Tao Te Ching.