An Analysis Of The Translation Of Bai Juyi's Poems From The Perspective Of Gadamer's Hermeneutics

Bai Juyi is another outstanding realistic poet who was born after Du Fu of the Tang Dynasty and the most productive poet of his contemporary age. He enjoys great fame in poetry arena both at home and abroad. His creativity is all-round, his poetry is variable in the form, and so is his thought. The most prominent feature of Bai's poetry is that the language is easy to understand, but at the same time, they are thoroughly tempered. Subsequently, how to interpret them exactly becomes the key factor in translation.Hermeneutics is a theory of understanding and interpretation, which is inevitably related to translation. At present the application of hermeneutics to translation has been studied broadly, but the broadest application of hermeneutic theories in translation are fusion of horizons, fore-understanding and effective history proposed by Gadamer.By taking Gadamer's hermeneutic theories as the theoretical basis with special reference to fusion of horizons, fore-understanding and effective history, this thesis makes a comparative study on different translation versions of Bai's poems. By combining theoretical exposition with the analysis of translation versions, this thesis aims at pointing out the relationship between hermeneutics and translation.This thesis consists of three chapters in addition to an introduction and a conclusion.The introduction briefly reviews the status and application in translation of hermeneutics both at home and abroad and points out the close relationship between hermeneutics and translation.Chapter One overviews the different stages of hermeneutics, namely, the special hermeneutics which is related to interpretation of The Bible; general hermeneutics which has become a common methodology and the modern hermeneutics which is developed by Heidegger and Gadamer. At the same time, the significant researchers who had contributed to hermeneutics are also introduced. But mainly explains the relationship between translation and Gadamer's hermeneutics, including the relationship between fusion of horizons and translation, fore-understanding and translation and effective history and translation.Chapter Two firstly gives an introduction to Bai Juyi's life and career. Then it explains his position in the historical age of poetic flourish and analyzes the poetic features of his works. At last, it gives a review of translation of his works.Chapter Three is the main part. This chapter analyzes different translation versions of Bai Juyi's poems from the aspects of fusion of horizons, fore-understanding and prejudice and effective history in terms of the choice of words, the syntactic relationship, images, poetic forms and themes.With the analytical comparisons of different translated versions of Bai Juyi's works by using Gadamer's hermeneutical theories including fusion of horizons, fore-understanding and effective history, the author arrives at the following conclusion: First of all, translators should make every effort to achieve fusion of horizons with both the source text and the target readers. The author also finds that in order to understand the source text exactly, translators must have a deep understanding of the source language and target language and their culture, history and social background. Last but not the least, the effect of effective history to translation can not be ignored. Translation, whatever kind it may be, all relate to understanding and interpretation of the source text. So hermeneutics, as a science of understanding and interpretation, has an indissoluble bond with translation.