A Contrastive Study Of Three English Versions Of Guan Ju From The Perspective Of Deconstructionism

Deconstructionism is a theory rising from the criticism of structuralism.Characterized by deconstructing,deconstructionism has tried to decompose the logocentrism which rules the Western countries over thousands of years.Deconstructionists hold the proposition of building a scientific theoretical system in the first place.Deconstructive translation theory is to introduce deconstructionism into translation studies.One of its radical features,anti-tradition,challenges some basic principles of traditional translation theory,such as,“faithfulness” and “authority of the author”.Together with the purpose of translation which is “reserving differences” rather“seeking common ground” and Venuti's foreignizing translation,deconstructionists propose some basic concepts of deconstructive translation theory,thereby generating new insight into translation studies.From the perspective of deconstructionism,this thesis makes a contrastive and microscopic analysis of three English versions of Guan Ju,the first poem in the Book of Odes.These three translators are Xu Yuanchong,a renowned Chinese translator;James Legge,a famous English sinologist;Ezra Pound,the pioneer of the American Imagist Movement.Although the English translation of the Book of Odes has been studied for centuries,deconstructive perspective is rarely discussed.This research is limited by the absence of some detailed and systematic studies,such as the in-depth study of some specific poems and relevant translation criticism under certain translation theory.Therefore,this thesis makes a contrastive study of three English translations under the guidance of four basic claims of deconstructive translation theory.Specifically,the thesis puts Guan Ju and its English translations into four different perspectives:semantic view,textual relationships,translator's tasks and subjectivity.This study setout to make a thorough analysis of a specific poem under deconstructionism,serving to broaden the vision of the translation research of the Book of Odes.The analysis shows that the meaning of the original poem is extended under the diachronic and synchronic deconstruction.These three English versions seem to be independent,but they are complementary to each other simultaneously,which gives a second life to the original poem.Restricted by their own translation purpose,these three translators adopt different translation strategies to make the readers experience the differences and diversities between different cultures.One of the most significant findings to emerge from this study is that deconstructionism has certain explanatory power and guidance in poetry translation.Taken together,these findings do bring enlightenment to the further research of English translation of Chinese poetry.