On Ci Poetry Translation

Ci poetry is a precious treasure in classical Chinese literature. As a form of lyric poetry, it is different from other styles of poetry in terms of concise words, profound meaning, and strict metrical patterns. Wang Guowei, a scholar in the Qing Dynasty said,"It can express what a poem can not express, but it can not fully express the subtlety."Thus, the translation and research of Ci poetry will help to promote the ever-growing cross-cultural communication in modern times.Reception aesthetics puts emphasis on the reader's status in receiving and interpreting literary works, which is different from other literary theories such as author-centered and text-centered literary theories. According to reception aesthetics, the literary work is an uncompleted, multi-layered, schematized formation full of blanks and indeterminacies, waiting for readers to fill. Thus, the meaning of a literary work is not created from the text itself but the reader's concretization, which sustains the life of a literary work.In reading and translation process of Ci poetry, the translator as the first reader of the source work, has his or her own subjectivity and creativity; as the end reader of the translated work, the target language (TL) reader plays an important role in concretizing the work's meaning. As a form of literary work, there are many places of indeterminacy in Ci poetry, such as places of indeterminacy in lexical level, syntactic level and metrical pattern. The factors mentioned above result in various translating methods and final translation versions.The thesis studies English translations of Su Shi's Ci poems with the help of reception aesthetics, makes a tentative analysis on Ci poetry translation in respect of translator's role, target language (TL) reader's status and translating strategies in conveying original aesthetic features of Ci poetry.Finally, the thesis comes to conclusions: first, to judge a translated version from the perspective of reception aesthetics shifts the focus from the text to the reader, which will highlight reader's subjectivity and creativity, encourage the birth of different versions of the same and finally help to improve the current assessing criteria; second, studying translating methods in Ci poetry from the perspective of reception aesthetics will enrich translation theories and methods of poetry translation.