Mutations In Transplanting The "Seed"

Poetry, regarded as the "best words in best order", is extremely expressive and intensive. Serving both as the building block and the carrier, Chinese classical poetry is one of the most important heritages of Chinese culture. Its neat form, beautiful melody, crystallized diction, rich images as well as its profound meaning make it unique and seemingly impossible to be translated into another language and culture. And it is widely agreed by translators and scholars at home and abroad that few translations of Chinese classical poetry are satisfactory.Quite a number of topics, either involved in translation activities or translation theories, are open for discussion, such as translatability or untranslatability, literal translation or free translation, foreignization or domestication, being similar in form or in spirit, being faithful or being creative and so on so forth. It has been a long time since these questions were ever raised, but they still remain unresolved. This thesis, thus, makes an effort toward solving the relevant problems involved in poetry translation through the discussion from the perspective of "mutation of the seed".In reviewing Susan Bassnett's "Transplanting the Seed:Poetry and Translation", this thesis has identified several demerits in her paper, such as contradictory ideas, vague idea of the "seed" in poetry translation, vague guideline for determining the right "seed" as well as locating and setting about its transplantation, and vague guideline for evaluating translations, etc. Based on these identified demerits, this thesis starts by the discussion about the multiple layers of representation of the "seed", which include form, image, idea, feeling, playfulness and cultural essence. In Chapter Four, mutation of the "seed" is proposed and discussed with illustrations of different translations of Tao Yuan-ming's poems.Mutations are involved in transplanting the "seed" of the poetry, some of which are upgrading, while others could be downgrading. The causes of mutations are as various and multi-layered as the mutations themselves. It could possibly be caused by mis-selection of the "seed" by the translator, or by his/her deliberation in mutating the "seed". And it is also possible that the frontiers of form, language and culture make the adaptation difficult and thus cause mutations. Improper environment and better environment would also likely cause downgrading mutations and upgrading mutations respectively. Some parts of the "seed" are bound to be lost or mutated. It can not be denied that the poetic intensity built up by form, imagery, idea, feeling, playfulness and cultural essence in the Chinese classical poetry is, to a greater or lesser degree, reduced through transplantation into English. Rewriting might be a good way to solve this problem, but the problem is that it is no longer the translation defined in its narrow sense.