A Study On The English Translation Of Jia Pingwa's Happy Dreams From The Perspective Of Cultural Poetics

Culture Poetics,an approach of literary criticism which was put forward by the American literary critic Stephen Greenblatt in the 1980s,was introduced into China in the 1990s.Constituted by culture and poetics,Culture Poetics possesses striking interdisciplinary characteristics.As a theory of literary criticism,Culture Poetics focuses on the reproduction of the literariness,cultural identity and poetic nature of the original text.In its integration process with translation studies,Cultural Poetics has taken on a new perspective that concentrates on the aesthetics of culture and poetics,thus injecting fresh blood into the field of translation studies.As a realistic masterpiece of Jia Pingwa,Happy Dreams is rooted in the fertile cultural soil of Shaanxi and presents a picture of the life of rural migrant workers with both rural and poetic strokes and in a dignified and humorous style.The use of different types of local language such as dialects,proverbs and slangs is the most prominent linguistic feature of Happy Dreams,demonstrating the unique poetic charm of Shaanxi culture.The English version of Happy Dreams by British translator Nicky Harman adequately reproduces the rich artistic thought and cultural connotations of an original work.Therefore,the present study takes her English translated version as the research object so as to explore the effectiveness of the Theory of Cultural Poetics in the guidance of the translation of Happy Dreams.Based on Cultural Poetics,the present thesis makes a comprehensive analysis of the reproduction of the cultural connotations and poetic characteristics of Happy Dreams from three levels,namely,the dimension of language,the dimension of culture and the dimension of aesthetics.This study is mainly devoted to the following two aspects:firstly,it clarifies the origin of Cultural Poetics,reviews its development,and elaborates the relationship between Cultural Poetics and literary translation.Secondly,based on the Theory of Cultural Poetics,it explores the cultural connotations and poetic values in Happy Dreams,and analyzes its reproduction of literary connotations and poetic characteristics by way of specific examplesIt is indicated in the research that,on the one hand,studying the translation of literary works in the light of Culture Poetics is conducive to excavating the cultural connotations and poetic values of an original work;On the other hand,the Theory of Cultural Poetics has a strong explanatory power on the translation of literary works.