A Study Of The English Translation Of The Narrating Subjects In Chinese Classical Poems

Tremendous study has been made in the field of translation of Chineseclassical poems, mainly focusing on the transference of the images, the equivalenceof the poetry form and phonetic level, as well as the ambiguous words and phrases inthose ancient poems. This thesis attempts to drag people’s attention to the narrativeperspective and its transference of Chinese ancient poems.As the Chinese traditional aesthetics appreciates the quality of beingimpersonal, meaning that the personality and individualism should be naturallydiluted in the hope of achieving implicitness and ambiguity, the rarity of personalpronouns in classical poems has always been a common phenomenon for Chinesereaders, which also accounts for the high frequency of an implied narrating subject.But being implied doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. Readers could still realize theexistence of the silent narrating subject by virtue of the images, verbs and tones inthe poem. Except for the reason from traditional aesthetics, the omitted narratingsubject could also draw strength from the paratactic characteristics of Chineselanguage, which requires little on the linguistic connection and precision in logic,grammar and syntax. The concision and paratactic facility of the Chinese languagecannot be more prominent in those classical poems, which leads readers to a fantasticaesthetic world of images, but at same time to a maze which is filled withsophisticated logical relations and semantic meanings.This typical implied narrating subject in Chinese classical poems turns out tobe an obstacle when it comes to interlingual translation from Chinese to English. Inorder to comply with the grammatical norms and strict conventions in English,sometimes translators have to fill the blank of narrating subject with a concretepersonal pronoun. However, this concretization makes the translated poem suffer aloss of the implicitness, ambiguity, and complexity in thematic significance, and adeconstruction of the state of the unity of man and nature reserved in original poemwith a silent narrating subject.Studies of ancient poetry translation have been drawing strength from aspectsof linguistics, which makes a promotion of the study from the analysis based onsubjective impression to a more scientific and objective research. Among of those linguistic theories, stylistics and narratology have become the new prospects. Thenarrative perspective, which matters a lot with the narrating subject, has ever beenemphasized as the key topic in the both fields of fictional stylistics and narratology.Professor Shen Dan (Shen,1998) has adapted and applied both theories into thestudy of fictional translation, and brought up the conception of "deceptiveequivalence", meaning that the translation and the source text reach the equivalenceat the level of “paraphrasable materials” but fail to keep the thematic significanceand aesthetic values attached with some linguistic forms. This declaration begins toshed lights on the study of translation of Chinese classical poem when it comes to therepresentation of the implied narrating subject. An application of Shen’s opinionneeds to be proved effective in analyzing the English translation of subject omissionin this thesis which have been intended to be fulfilled with an explicit personalpronoun. The extra fulfillment of the blank in narrating subject could lead to a slashin the theme, artistic conception and aesthetic effect embedded in the original text, bythe author’s opinion, which may also be called "deceptive equivalence".This thesis aims at making an exploration at the underlying reasons for theimplied narrating subjects in the field of Chinese traditional philosophy, applyingstylistics and narratology to analyze narrating subjects in the translated Chineseclassical poems in hopes of discussing the loss of aesthetic values lying inimplicitness, ambiguity, emotional conveyance and constitution of artistic conceptionin a translated poem with an explicit narrating subject, in which way makes anaffirmation of the significance of the silent existence of the narrating subject;therefore, with the consideration of the competence of western readers to confrontthe omission of narrating subjects, the thesis could finally entitle a positiveevaluation with the blank in narrating subject in its correspondent translation sincethe aesthetic values could be maintained at its maximum. The author also hopes thatthe exploration of underlying philosophical reasons and the application of stylisticsand narratology could help translators raise their consciousness of the culturalessence embedded in the omitted subjects and polish a sharp insight to avoid a"deceptive equivalence" in the future translation, which could drive an innovation inancient poetry translation.