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Transplanting and Rewriting of Poetic Image Translation

Author: HeZuo
Tutor: TangYueQin
School: Southwest Jiaotong University
Course: Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
Keywords: Poetry Image Translation Transplanting Rewriting
CLC: I046
Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2008
Downloads: 581
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Abstract

Classical Chinese poetry (CCP) is the reflection of the traditional Chinese culture with cultural connotations and is the most concentrated and condensed form of literature. However, the essence of poems lies in the images and the arrangement of images constitutes the most prominent poetic feature. Image translation, therefore, is a means to realize the intercultural communication between different peoples. The successful translation of CCP, to some extent, depends on the successful translation of poetic images. Image translation is an important part of the deep cultural exchanges between different peoples with different cultures. Hence this paper probes into the cultural approach in translating poetic images-transplanting and rewriting. Both are termed from the perspective of the intercultural communication and the goal of them is to ensure the nature of the cultural images and the cultural flavor of the original. The cultural approach of transplanting and rewriting the images in CCP is generally implemented through four basic methods, namely image preservation, image modification, image addition and image omission. It should be noted that no matter what methods of the translation of poetic images are adopted, the conveyance and preservation of the cultural connotation of images is of primary concern.Li Bai (701-762) is one of the most distinguished High Tang poets and the greatest Romantic poet in Chinese literary history after Qu Yuan. Being bold and unrestrained in style, fantastic and splendid in imagination, and plain and natural in language, his poetry is one of the most important classics in the treasure house of Chinese and the world’s literature, especially the select and arrangement of images are his distinctive personalities. This paper attempts to make a tentative study on the translation of poetic images from a cultural perspective, employing a comparative analytical method and cases of Li Bai’s poetic image English versions by some noted translators both home and abroad. From the comparison of the merits and demerits of the noted translators’ versions, we conclude when some images exist in both source culture and target culture and bear the same meaning and associations, literal translation should be adopted in rendering the images in classic Chinese poetry; if the images in the source language cannot draw forth the same association in the readers of the target language or even may cause misunderstanding, they should be transferred into a different one in the target language. And when some substitutes in the target culture can be found to replace the counterpart of the source culture and get the same effect on the target readers, cultural substitution can be adopted by translators; when a kind of cultural phenomenon of one country does not exist in another country, something that is familiar to one culture may be rare in another culture, the translator may adopt rewritings such as addition, omission or footnoting etc.This dissertation is divided into five parts. Besides the introduction of Chapter One and the conclusion of Chapter Five, the other three chapters paralleled to investigate the English translation of Li Bai’s poetic images from the point of three features of poetic images, that is: descriptive images, rhetoric images, and symbolic images.

Transplanting and Rewriting of Poetic Image Translation

Abstract

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