On English Translation Of Classical Chinese Poetry From The Perspective Of Theme-Rheme Theory

Poetry is a special kind of literary style, concise but meaningful. Classical Chinese poetry varies a lot from English poetry owing to many factors like language, culture and so on. Translation is difficult, and poetry translation is even more difficult. Domestic and foreign scholars have done a great deal of efforts in the English translation of classical Chinese poetry, and have achieved a lot. But traditional translation studies are always from the point of view of philosophy and culture, with the focus on such elements of art as tone, style, flavor, spirit. Later, with the development of linguistics, the results of linguistics are applied to the study of translation. Such issues as translation equivalence and translation unit begin to be discussed and analyzed from the perspectives of semantics, syntax, and pragmatics and so on, striving to be objective, accurate, systematic and scientific. Different from the traditional translation studies, this paper seeks to apply Theme-Rheme theory to the translation study on classical Chinese poetry, approaches the choherence of poems at the levels of clause and text, and tries to interpret the information structure models of poems and rules of their translation.Translation is realized at text level instead of at word, phrase or sentence level. The ultimate goal of translation is to achieve a relative equal at text level. Baker holds that equivalent translation at text level is realized by means of cohesion and information organization (especially thematic structure). Thematic pattern, as a kind of information structure, is the representation of communicators'intent, which should be an indispensable reference in target texts'construction. So translators need to rebuild the information structure of source texts, for the purpose of conforming to the specifications of target language and constructing cohesive and coherent target texts. Thus, target readers will have the same response as readers of the source text.This paper firstly introduces the significance of the study, the methodology adopted. Next it reviews the studies on classical Chinese poetry translation and application of Theme-Rheme theory in translation both at home and abroad, further pointing out gaps in the field. After presenting the theoretical framework for this study, the paper conducts a contrastive study of thematic structure and thematic progression between English and classical Chinese poems, aiming to show the differences in their language structures, and find out the criterion and basis for English translation of classical Chinese poetry. Then English versions of some typical classical Chinese poems are analyzed at levels of clause and text, exploring the approaches and strategies to English translation of classical Chinese poetry. In the author's opinion, Theme-Rheme theory can be applied to English translation of classical Chinese poetry. Influenced by their own language, English poems and classical Chinese poems reflect different characteristics in thematic structure and thematic progression. In English translation of classical Chinese poetry, the characteristics of thematic structure and thematic progression of English poems should be abided by so as to create the equal effect on target readers as that on the original ones.What the study unveils is as follows:First of all, concerning the choice of theme, the elliptical themes in source poems are to be complemented; Marked themes are to be preserved if possible, but under some circumstances, although marked themes aren't used in source poems, they are adopted in the target ones in the pursuit of rhyme; multiple themes are frequently utilized in English versions to achieve coherence for traget readers'sake. Then, as regards thematic progression patterns, the original ones are to be kept to the greatest possible on the basis of not harming the meaning of source poems and the delivery of poets'emotion; but if the same thematic progression patterns employed in target poems brings about a different effect, some adjustments are to be made to reconstruct the thematic progression patterns of the target texts. In a word, in English translation of classical Chinese poetry, only when complying with the specifications of thematic structure and thematic progression of English poetry can a properly cohesive and semantically coherent target text be constructed, and the same communicative effect can be reproduced.