Image-G Actualization In The Translation Of Classical Chinese Poetry

Classical Chinese poetry is a gem of traditional Chinese culture and in order to bring it to the global stage,the translation of classical Chinese poetry must be heavily depended on.The difficulty of classical Chinese poetry translation lies in not only the condensed words and beautiful images,but also the ethereal artistic conception which is considered as the soul of classical Chinese poetry.As an indispensable part of classical Chinese poetry,Wang Wei’s landscape poetry is characterized by "painting-in-poetry" and "zen-in-poetry",presenting beautiful and profound artistic conception.To certain extent,translating classical Chinese poems is conveying the artistic conception.Domestic scholar Jiang Qiuxia applies the Gestalt psychology to literary translation and first puts forward the key concept of Image-G,offering a new research angle for conveying artistic conception in the translation of classical Chinese poetry.This thesis attempts to conduct a case study of Wang Wei’s landscape poetry from the perspective of Image-G actualization and Gestalt psychology,with an eye to achieving Image-G actualization in the translation of classical Chinese poetry.Literature research method,case analysis method and comparative analysis method are mainly adopted in the research,based on which the author suggests that the whole process of image-G actualization in the study consists of the following three steps:firstly,the deep understanding of poets and the aesthetic appreciation of classical Chinese poems;secondly,the reconstruction of translators’ mental Image-G through linguistic actualization;thirdly,the proper compensation for cultural default.A translator has dual roles,both as a reader of the original text and a writer of the translation.A responsible translator should first be an excellent reader who spares no effort to fully appreciate the artistic conception in the source poem and form his or her mental Image-G as close to the original one as possible,providing the basic premise of Image-G actualization in the translation of classical Chinese poetry.Therefore,how to represent translators’ mental Image-G through linguistic actualization is the key step of the whole process of Image-G actualization.Based on the wholeness of Gestalt psychology and some Gestalt principles of perceptual organization,principle of figure-ground perception,principle of similarity,principle of proximity and principle of closure,several corresponding translation methods for better reconstructing the Image-G are proposed,outlining contour,highlighting,replacing,adjusting word order,leaving blank unfilled.Nevertheless,due to the cultural gap,even though translators perfectly represent the Image-G of classical Chinese poems,target readers will not necessarily obtain the aesthetic experience that is the same as or similar to that experienced by readers of source poems,which is especially true when it comes to Wang Wei’s landscape poetry featured with artistic blank and profound artistic conception.It is thus necessary to adopt some compensation methods to make up for the cultural default,including annotating and illustrating.The ultimate aim of classical Chinese poetry translation is to convey the artistic conception rather than to explain source poems.All the translation methods mentioned in this thesis are geared to help translators better translate classical Chinese poetry,thus offering target readers a chance to form the Image-G through their own reading experience and finally appreciate the profound artistic conception.