A Comparative Study Of English Translation Of Li Bai’s Poetry From The Perspective Of Graduation In Appraisal Theory

Li Bai was one of the greatest romantic poets of the Tang Dynasty.His poems are bold and unrestrained,fresh and elegant,rich in imagination and natural and lively language,which is the treasures of Chinese traditional culture.Up to now,Li Bai’s poems are still of great research value and have been translated into many languages and versions by translators from different countries.However,domestic scholars mainly carry out qualitative research on the translation of Li Bai’s poems from the perspectives of Cognitive Poetics,Skopos Theory,Discourse,George Steiner’s Hermeneutics Translation Theory and Reception Aesthetics,etc.There are few qualitative and quantitative comparative studies on Li Bai’s poems and translated versions based on the graduation system of appraisal theory.Therefore,based on the graduation system of appraisal theory,this thesis makes a qualitative and quantitative study of Li Bai’s 30 poems and their two English translations.Appraisal theory is a relatively complete system of language analysis.It is mainly divided into three subsystems of attitude,engagement and graduation.which express emotion,standpoint and strength respectively.In recent years,appraisal theory has been widely used in the analysis of interpersonal meaning in various texts,but it is less involved in the translation of classical Chinese poetry.This study is based on the graduation system of appraisal theory,supplemented by UAM Corpus Tool 3 corpus statistical software.This paper makes a comparative study on the distribution,types and characteristics of graduation resources of selected 30 poems of Li Bai and two English versions.It also reveals the differences in the distribution of graduation resources and translation skills between the two translated versions,and further explores the possible reasons for the differences.Through data analysis,it is found that the graduation resources in Li Bai’s poems and two English versions are generally the same,and the force resources are dominant,supplemented by the focus resources.Among them,the specific distribution characteristics of the graduation resources in the original poem and two translated versions are as follows:the up-scaling graduation resources are more than the down-scaling graduation resources,which reflects the lofty force characteristics of the romanticism of Li Bai’s poetry;the force resources are more than the focus resources,which shows that the translators have grasped the force of the poem and the clarity of the poet’s emotion in the translation process;because the two versions use different translation strategies,they both adjust the graduation resources in the original poem.The graduation resources in Xu Yuanchong’s version are less than those in the original,while those in Obata’s version are more than those in the original.Xu’s translation adopts the translation strategy of omission of graduation resources,while Obata adopts the translation strategy of increasing graduation resources in the translation process.Although the two translators have translated the graduation meaning expressed in the original poem,due to the different cultural backgrounds,translation purposes and translation strategies of the two translators,there are some differences in the translation of the original poem of graduation resources.Based on the graduation system of appraisal theory,this study makes a comparative analysis of two English translations of Li Bai’s poems,it provides a new perspective for the study of Chinese classical poetry translation,makes up for the deficiency of poetry translation research,demonstrates the feasibility of the graduation system in poetry translation.It is conducive to the more systematic and deeper development of the study of English translation of Li Bai’s poems and makes some contributions to the practice of Chinese classical poetry translation.