Imagery is the soul of Chinese classical poetry,a treasure in Chinese literature. Poetry translation from Chinese to English is a painstaking work because images are rich with their own cultural connotations, which enhance the difficulty of poetry translation. Nowadays, since the cultural communication is increasingly more and more popular and important in the current globalization trend, translation studies have shifted from a linguistic approach to a cultural approach. Cultural relativism holds that no culture is intrinsically superior or inferior to another, and native culture should be exported while the exterior culture is imported, so that the cultural communication can be really achieved and cultural otherness can be noticed. The thesis, starting with the elaboration of imagery, probes its definitions both in western and Chinese critics, and then adopts specific examples to analyze and illustrate systematically how the cultural factors influence translators'choice of images and expressions, and makes a tentative study on the principle and strategies of the image translation in Chinese classical poetry.Since images contain abundant national culture, the accuracy of image translation directly influences the target language readers'understanding of the source text. In addition, the nature of translation is cross-cultural communication activities. Therefore, examining western and Chinese definitions of image will be helpful for translators to find a support to overcome the cultural barriers in image translation.It is well known that the images in Chinese classical poetry are of great variety. The studies on the image translation in Chinese classical poetry have got abundant achievements. The thesis examines the former studies on Chinese classical poetry. On the basis of fully understanding of the current studies, a detailed account of imagery is given,among which its categories, characters are expatiated.Cultures in west and China are quite different, but how are the cultural barriers embodied in the translation of Chinese classical poetry? The author holds that the cultural barriers in the translation of Chinese classical poetry are multifarious, but five aspects are obvious, such as natural environment, tradition and customs and historical allusions, etc. therefore, the thesis analyzes the cultural barriers from the five aspects.Based on above discussion, the thesis classifies the relationship between the culture in Chinese classical poetic image and the target culture into three: cultural overlap, cultural parallelism and cultural default. On this basis, by following Schleiermacher's principle and analyzing a great deal of examples, the thesis summarizes the basic translating principles, such as semantic equivalence and aesthetic equivalence, and strategies like replacement, addition, omission, transplantation, etc. and try to find out a rule that can be applied to the translation of Chinese classical poetry. |