On The Characteristics Of Chinese And English Poetry And Loss And Gain In Poetry Translation

Poetry is the pick of the basket of literary mine, and it is the most artistic literary style. There exist to some extent incommensurability between Chinese and English because of the differences in nature of two languages; especially for poetry which demandingly requires concise, elegance, connotation, harmony and image in language. So, poetry is always regarded as the most difficult text to be translated.Whether poetry is translatable and how to translate poetry are topics heatedly discussed in translation studies throughout the world. The famous American poet Robert Frost says poem is what is lost in translation. Some poets think though poetry can not be translated totally from one language into another, they can be transplanted. Accordingly, the task of a translator is to transplant the seeds (the original poem) of poetry into a new place (the target language) and to cultivate them. This thesis tends to analyze the lost and gain in poetry translation through a comparative study on the poetry translating process and result of poetry translation. In spite of numerous difficulties in poetry translation, a lot of excellent translated works have been produced, which made great contribution to the cultural exchange between Chinese and English.Chapter one discusses what translation is and the main tasks of poetry translation. Besides, rules of translation are also listed according to some theorists of translation.Chapter Two tells the features of both Chinese and English as a poetic medium. The Chinese character is unique. Differences between Chinese and English lie in the nature of the two languages themselves, such as visual, semantic, auditory and grammatical ones. Then there are differences due to unique concepts or divergent ways of thinking and modes of feeling.Chapter Three illustrates the translatability of both classical Chinese and English poetry. First, there exist unavoidable linguistic bases of translation, in the aspects of phonology, syntax, vocabulary, forms and genres and comparative prosody, respectively. Following that is a more detailed illustration on the loss as well as compensation.Chapter Four deals with gains of poetry translation between Chinese and English. The author puts more emphasis on the contribution and influence on the cultural exchange. With examples, the thesis makes it clear that though we should confess that the translation of poetry is not an easy task, it does not follow that it is useless to make any efforts. Anyway, what is untranslatable is really worth translating. It is so many translators who made constant efforts in mutual poetry translation that keeps such a great number of famous pomes existing in different languages.