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A Study of Arthur Waley’s the Nine Songs-From the Perspective of Translator’s Subjectivity

Author: YuYeSheng
Tutor: JiangLin;ChenKeFang
School: Zhejiang Normal University
Course: English Language and Literature
Keywords: translator’s subjectivity Arthur Waley The Nine Songs sprung rhythm
CLC: H059
Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2011
Downloads: 58
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Abstract


As one of the sources of Chinese poetry and culture, Chuci has profound and lasting influence on Chinese literature. The study of Chuci is always the hot spot in the academic world. As early as 1879, the sinologist E. H. Parker published in China Review a translation of Lisao(The Sadness of Separation), which was considered as the first English translation of Chuci. After that, a lot of translators home and abroad have been committing to translating Chuci, such as Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang, Xu Yuanchong, Zhuo Zhenying and David Hawkes.Nowadays, the studies on the English translation of Chuci are mostly centered on Lisao. In recent years, Jiuge which is a collection of poetry and a major document for studying the Wu culture in ancient Chu State, describing the ancient sacrifice activities have increasingly aroused scholars’interests. In 1956, Arthur Waley published The Nine Songs:A Study of Shamanism in Ancient China, which is a combination of translation and research of Jiuge. Waley explored the origin and development of the Wu culture in ancient China, which makes The Nine Songs highly-regarded in the religious study. In contrast, as a translation work, The Nine Songs is almost ignored in translation field. So far,few researchers have analyzed it from the translation perspective.This paper analyzes Waley’s The Nine Songs from the perspective of translator’s subjectivity. The author explores the manifestation of translator’s subjectivity in the translation process, and expounds the subjective factors, such as translators’cultural standpoint, translation intention, aesthetic view, etc.; all these factors will exert much influence on translator’s choice of source-text, translation strategies and methods.First of all, this paper introduces the poet Qu Yuan and his major works, the translator Arthur Waley and the translation of Jiuge. Then it discusses the related issues of translator’s subjectivity. After that, this paper analyzes Waley’s translation process, investigating his translation strategies and methods. In the translation process, Waley takes target readers’expectations into account. So he gives priority to domestication rather than foreignization and he also adopts other translation methods, such as transliteration with additional annotations. Apart from that, Waley abandons the traditional rhyme pattern of English poetry and translates Jiuge into a free verse based on Sprung Rhythm, which is obvious manifestation of his subjectivity.Through analyses of Arthur Waley’s The Nine Songs:A Study of Shamanism in Ancient China from the perspective of translator’s subjectivity, it comes to the conclusion that translation is a creative working process where translator’s subjectivity is actively performed.

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