A Study Of Jiang Feng’s Chinese Translation Of Defamiliarization Devices In Emily Dickinson’s Poetry In Light Of The Theory Of Translation Poetics

Emily Dickinson is considered one of the most famous poets in American literature and one of the pioneers of modernist poetry.Throughout her life,she wrote more than 1,700 poems which are mainly about nature,life,faith,and love.Dickinson’s unique insights into nature,religion,and life and death have always allowed her to write down original and distinctive poems.The unique images,frequent use of rhetorical devices,and unconventional stylistic features characterize her poetry with defamiliarization.Dickinson is a late-comer in China.In 1984,Jiang Feng has translated and published Selected Poems of Dickinson,introducing the first anthology of Dickinson’s poetry in China.His translation has been well received by both the professionals and common readers because of its fame for preserving and reproducing the effect of defamiliarization in the original poems to a great extent.In light of the theory of Lefevere’s translation poetics,the present thesis will first analyse the defamiliarization devices in Dickinson’s poetry,and then explore how Jiang Feng handles those devices to reproduce the defamiliarization effects of the original work in the process of translation.Lefevere is one of the initiators of the cultural turn in translation studies,and the poetics of translation is the core of his translation theory.He puts forward with the theory of "rewriting" and includes translation in the scope of rewriting,arguing that the ideology of the translator and the dominant poetics in the target culture are the two main factors influencing translation.At the same time,he advocates that in the process of translation,if linguistic considerations come into conflict with ideological and/or poetic considerations,the latter will tend to win out.Thus,in certain literary translations that are less concerned with ideology,poetics becomes the most crucial factor that governs and influences the process of translation.According to Lefevere,poetics is composed of two components,namely,the inventory component,which consists of literary devices,genres,motifs,prototypical characters and situations,and symbols;and the functional component,which denotes a concept of what the role of literature is,or should be,in the social system as a whole.The functional component of poetics exerts an innovative influence on the whole literary system,while the influence exerted by the inventory component of poetics is conservative.In short,poetics is exceptionally influential for translation,especially for those literary translations that are less concerned with ideological issues.Based on Lefevere’s translation theory of poetics,the thesis presents a detailed analysis of how Jiang Feng handles the defamiliarization devices of Dickinson’s poetry.It consists of six chapters in total.The first chapter introduces research background,research questions,research methods,theoretical framework,and research significance.The second chapter is the literature review,in which studies on the phenomenon of defamiliarization in Dickinson’s poetry home and broad,domestic studies on Dickinson’s poetry and its translation,and previous studies on the basis of Lefevere’s translation theory of poetics have been reviewed and summarized.The third chapter is the theoretical framework of the thesis that introduces the evolution of translation poetics theory and the essence of Lefevere’s translation theory of poetics with an analysis of its relevance to this study.Then,in accordance with Lefevere’s translation theory of poetics,the fourth chapter discusses the defamiliarization devices in Dickinson’s poetry from three perspectives:image,rhetoric,and stylistic features,which respectively correspond to symbolism,literary technique,and genre in the inventory component of poetics.The fifth chapter takes Jiang Feng’s Chinese translation as the object of study,analyzing the defamiliarization reflected by the translator’s selection of the original text from the perspective of the functional component of poetics.And then it explores how the translator deals with the defamiliarization devices in the original work and whether it reproduces the effect of defamiliarization based on the inventory component of poetics.The final chapter summarizes the major findings of the research,reflects on the limitations,and makes suggestions for future related research.The major findings of the research are as follows:First,the defamiliarization effect in Dickinson’s poetry is mainly achieved through peculiar imageries,frequent use of rhetorical devices,unconventional rhyme and syntax,and unexpected initial capitalization and punctuation.Second,Jiang Feng’s selection of Emily Dickinson’s poetry as the original text is under the influence of the poetics at his time,and his choice is also a manifestation of defamiliarization.Third,Jiang Feng abides by his own principle of "similarity implies fidelity"in the process of translation.It is hoped that the present research will be somehow helpful or inspiring for both poetry translators and poetry translation scholars in China.