Translation Of Rhyming-Characters In Tang Poems Into English: A Semiotic Perspective

Translation is an activity with great practicality, yet the guidance of theory is still quite necessary. There are variety kinds of translation theories and people study translation from different angles. Recently, people began studying translation based on some new disciplines and analyzing translation practice with new theories, among which semiotics is one. The major feature of semiotics'study on translation is the studying of meaning. There is an impressive meaning analyzing modal in semiotics that helps to analyze the use and influence of three aspects of meaning in translation.In China, there is such a saying as "Tang Dynasty is famous for Poems, Song Dynasty is famous for Ci and Yuan Dynasty is famous for Qu". Among the three, the Tang Poems is the pearl of Chinese poems with its skillful rhyme, imaginative image, neat form, and unrivalled number. As an essential part of traditional Chinese culture, Tang Poems has gained much attention from the whole world. About the translation of Tang Poems, scholars at home and abroad have done much both in practice and in theories. Generally speaking, there are two strategies for poetry translation:poetry for poetry and prose for poetry. As for the mainstream poetry for poetry strategy, there are two types of versions: blank verse and rhyme verse.In view of all these, the thesis investigates the translation of rhyming-characters in Tang Poems from the perspective of semiotics. The thesis is to deal with how to weigh the reproduce of rhyme and the expressing of meaning in the translation of Tang Poems from the three aspects of meaning.Based on a brief literature review on the translations of rhyme in poetry at home and abroad, the features of Chinese and English in the aspect of prosody are compared, and the illumination of these features on the translation of rhyming-characters in Chinese poems is discussed. The studies of the semiotic theory in some western countries and in China are summarized and then the combination of semiotics with translation is elaborated.The thesis holds that the semiotic theory by Charles W. Morris (1901-1979) offers a new perspective for translation studies. His mature semiotic theory is traced out in Signs, Language, and Behavior (1946). Morris'semiotic is concerned with explaining the tri-relation between syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics in a dyadic way.The subject being investigated consists of some selected poems by Li Bai, known as the Genuine of Poetry and Du Fu, the Sage of Poetry?, together with the multiple English versions of their poems. According to the meaning theory by Charles W. Morris, the translation of the rhyming-characters in Tang Poems is analyzed from the following three aspects:referential meaning, intralingual meaning, and pragmatic meaning. The analysis focuses on the different exhibition of referential meaning, intralingual meaning and pragmatic meaning in different versions and the corresponding effects.After the comparison and analysis, the thesis has come to a conclusion that in the translation of the rhyming-characters in Tang Poems, intralingual meaning is the most important part. A translator should pay much attention to the functions of rhyming-characters in prosody. In the translation practice, a translator may neglect part of the referential meaning and pragmatic meaning for the sake of transferring the intralingual meaning. The thesis has offered some reference and illumination for the later translation of the rhyming-characters in Tang Poems.