A Probe Into Representation Of Images In Translation Of Shakespeare's Plays

Shakespeare's (1564-1616) plays have been regarded as classics in world literature with an everlasting glamour, which attract innumerable literature lovers and researchers to explore with an intense passion. Shakespeare's plays were first introduced into China as translated versions. Since then, a lot of translators have devoted to reinterpreting Shakespeare's works, producing sets of Chinese versions with different styles. In the practice of translating Shakespeare's works, how to translate large amounts of image in the plays arouses translators'attention. Images are loaded with so rich ethnic culture and aesthetic connotation that the image translation has been a long-existing challenge for translators. Translation approaches of image vary with translators and translated versions. Whether the images in the source language are transferred to the target language successfully is one of the important factors to translation effect. However, there are still few attempts to make a penetrating probe into the Chinese translation of image in Shakespeare's plays.Imagery theory in Chinese classical literature is an essential theory in Chinese poetic and aesthetics. The relation between the three core categories --"yan","xiang"and"yi"remains controversial in Chinese ancient linguistic philosophy. In Chinese classical literature theory, their relation that"yan"describes"xiang";"xiang"exhibits"yi";"yan"and "xiang"serve to express"yi";"yi"dominates"yan"and"xiang". This thesis points out that the process of image translation could be seen as the transfer of"yi"and"xiang"by the way of the transformation of"yan"between the source language and target language. So Translators should make decision with how to treat the relation between the three categories. This thesis will base on Imagery Theory in Chinese classical literature to discuss the image translation results in the translated versions of Shakespeare's plays. The author classifies the translation results into four dominating types, namely, equivalence, deformation, loss and amplification. The translation of images from eight influential plays such as Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Macbeth, As You Like It, The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Twelfth Night, will be discussed to probe into how to transfer and represent aesthetic images in translation. This thesis attempts to explore a new translation approach based on Chinese Imagery Theory which may also fill in some blanks in translation of Shakespearean plays research.