Handling Implicit Coherence In The English Translation Of Classcal Chinese Poetry

Classical Chinese poetry is one of the most valuable heritages in the world. More and more beautiful poems are translated into different languages and it is appreciated by numerous readers. However, most of the translations focus on rhyme and meter instead of sense and meaning. It results in some difficulties in understanding and appreciating the original flavor of the poems. Poetry, as a special literary genre, whose quality of translation is quite influenced by the translation of the implicit coherence. This thesis, from the perspective of the relevance theory, discusses better ways for handling the implicit coherence in the English translation of classical Chinese poetry.Implicit coherence is a concept based on the doubts cast on Halliday's Cohesion Theory. As opposed to explicit coherence, it refers to unified semantic relations established by non-linguistic factors. It has three features: 1) it is a matter of degree; 2) it is covert; 3) it is inferentially established. Sperber and Wilson's relevance theory provides a solid theoretical foundation for handling implicit coherence. According to the relevance theory and its account of translation, the translation process should be changed from text-centered into reader-centered. The theory has great impact on the traditional translation for both the artistic conception and implicit meaning. For poetry, there should be some reasons for which the implicit coherence emerges, especially in classical Chinese poetry. This thesis selects altogether fifty poems in the Tang Dynasty. It first analyzes the implicit coherence in these poems, respectively on the linguistic and cultural levels. We find that the different language customs, cultural background and cultural elements, such as allusion and symbols, jointly constitute to the establishment of implicit coherence and may rose difficulty. In the following chapter, this thesis compares thirty seven translated versions and proposes some strategies for translating the implicit coherence in classical Chinese poetry on both levels. The strategies are motivated by the relevance theory. To deal with implicit coherence on the linguistic level, we can use categories of using direct speech, tense transformation, adding personal reference and using relative clauses. To handle implicit coherence on the cultural level, the strategies we may use include literal translation, paraphrasing, substitution and omission.