A Cognitive Study Of The Image Construction And Comprehension In The English Translation Of Tang Poetry

In the long history of Chinese civilization,ancient poetry is undoubtedly a fascinating chapter in Chinese cultural history.Tang poetry,the highest cultural achievement,represents the peak of Chinese classical poetry.In the translation field of Tang poetry,many excellent translators have emerged at home and abroad,such as Xu Yuanchong,Yang Xianyi,Stephen Owen.To date,the researches on the translation of Tang poetry are relatively affluent.However,the analysis of the differences between different translated versions of Tang poems is far from enough.Poems,composed of images with solid lyricism and a high degree of generalization,are not only the precipitation of humanities,emotions and culture in a special era but also pose extremely difficult in translation and comprehension.For a long time,translators have found it essential to tackle the image of poems for the representation of poets’ sensory feelings.Figure and ground,as two key concepts of cognitive poetics,constitute the basic elements for translators in their translation.This thesis focuses on 65 Tang poems and two translated versions by Xu Yuanchong,a famous Chinese translator,and Stephen Owen,an American translator(hereinafter referred to as Xu’s version and Owen’s version).Guided by the figure-ground theory,the thesis first compares the image represented by the two translators and analyzes their way of image construction.Different translators have different translation styles.As a Chinese translator,Xu translates poems from a Chinese perspective.Compared with Owen’s version,whether Xu’s version resonates more with Chinese EFL learners remains unexplained.Therefore,a Chinese-English consistency judgment task is designed with the aid of E-Prime to explore Chinese EFL learners’ mental process of image comprehension in terms of response time and accuracy rate.The research procedure is as follows.Firstly,the English and Chinese versions of selected Tang poems are aligned,from which,358 images are extracted and classified into two groups: dynamic image group and static image group with the figure and ground in each image identified and the perspective of the poets and translators confirmed.Secondly,by analyzing the differences of the two translators’ choice of figure and ground in contrast with the original version,the thesis tries to clarify the possible causes for these differences.Finally,Chinese EFL learners’ online comprehension of two translated versions are explored.The thesis mainly addresses the following questions.1)What are the similarity and differences between the two translated versions concerning the image representation?2)In what way do the two translators construct the images in English?3)How do Chinese EFL learners comprehend the images in the two translated versions?4)What are the factors influencing Chinese EFL learners’ image comprehension of English translation of Tang poems?The findings are as follows: 1)Both Xu and Owen tend to retain the image state of the original poem in their translation;however,compared with Owen’s version,more image transformation(dynamic vs.static)are found in Xu’s version.2)Compared with Owen’s version,more transpositions of figure and ground appear in Xu’s construction of images.That is,the narrative perspective of Xu differs more from that of original poets,while Owen’s version is more consistent with the original poem.3)Chinese EFL learners comprehend the images represented in Owen’s version more easily,resulting in quicker response and high accuracy rate,which shows that the way of image construction affects learners’ comprehension.4)Learners’ comprehension of the English translation of Tang poems is influenced by both the transposition of the figure and ground and the image transformation(dynamic image vs.static image).The findings of the study can provide a new perspective for future research on the study of poetry.In addition,the application of figure-ground theory to the translation of poems can not only deepen the appreciation of Tang poetry but also fascinate people all over the world with the unique beauty of poetic images,shedding insights into the practice of “telling Chinese stories in English”.However,there are still some limitations,for instance,the current study focuses only on Chinese EFL learners’ comprehension,and their aesthetic feeling in reading poems is not touched upon.In the future,researchers can adopt more advanced experimental tools,such as eye-tracking and ERP to explore more detailed aspects of readers’ brain and facilitate the study of poem appreciation.