A Study On Protestant Missionaries’ English Translation Of Chinese Poetry

This paper attempts to give an overall description and analysis of the English translation of Chinese poetry by protestant missionaries from the early 19 th century to the 1950 s.Based on primary historical data and relevant research documents,the paper collates the English translations of Chinese poetry by missionaries which are scattered in journals and miscellaneous books during that historical period.Then it further explores missionaries’ text selection,translation motivation and strategies in historical context,trying to sort out the development process and value changes of missionaries’ poetry translation activities.Both macro description and case analysis are employed in this paper.On the one hand,it seeks to sketch a panoramic picture of missionaries’ English translation of Chinese poetry.On the other hand,Charles Budd is a representative of missionary translators who made the greatest contribution,thus his Chinese Poems is selected as a case study.The main findings and conclusions are as follows:The relevant writings and paratexts of the missionaries’ translations show a positive attitude toward Chinese poetry.Missionaries’ translation motivations are classified into two categories.One is motivated by utilitarian purposes,either to focus on the information value of poems or to serve for Christian mission.The other is to introduce Chinese poetry comprehensively out of appreciation and admiration.The translation of Chinese poetry by missionaries can be roughly divided into the initial period(1815-1840),the development period(1872-1912),and the mature period(1912-1948).The translations of the first two periods are fragmentary poems that scattered in newspapers or miscellaneous collections.Most of translations in the initial period are unknown poems with simple,straightforward language and easy-to-understand content,aiming at conveying cultural information and encyclopedic knowledge rather than reproducing the literary nature of the original poems.When it comes to the development period,the translations are mainly poems of classical poets,and begin to focus on the formal characteristics of Chinese poetry.The singlevolume collections of translated poems that systematically show the face of Chinese poetry firstly emerges in the mature period.Charles Budd’s Chinese Poems is a typical representative of translations in the mature period.This book selects fifty-five Chinese poems,all of which are famous poems by classic poets.This study finds that all the poems translated by Budd are rhymed,and a variety of translation methods such as adaptation,adjustment,transliteration and literal translation are used.Different from the characteristic of translating only the “message” of the original poems in the initial period,Budd pays more attention to the literary and poetic nature of Chinese poetry and often makes various adjustments to the content of the original poems in order to pursue the beauty of poetic form.