The Translation Of Numerals In Xu Yuanchong’s300Tang Poems

Scholars and translators have made a vast number of studies on the translation of Tang poems. Among them, Xu Yuanchong is considered as one of the best translators both theoretically and practically.300Tang Poems is one of his great translation works. Though the title of this thesis is the translation of numerals in300Tang Poems, to be exact, it is the translation of words related to numerals. The study is designed to solve the following two questions:Firstly, what are the characteristics of numerals in300Tang Poems? And how many classifications are there of these numerals?Secondly, what translation strategy and methods has Xu adopted in dealing with the translation of words and expressions related to numerals?The study adopts the quantitative analysis as well as qualitative analysis. Words and expressions related to numerals are collected and input into Excel Form manually for analysis. There are three major findings of the study.Firstly, there are as many as451numbers appearing in283poems. These451numbers include31different quantifiers. The most frequently used numerals in the text are:"one","thousand","ten thousand","three" and "hundred"."One" is used most frequently and it is one time more than the other four numerals;Secondly, numbers in words related to numerals can be classified into two main categories:those used to calculate and those not used to calculate. There are two main subcategories of those used to calculate:calculating numerals and exaggerating numerals. And there are five subcategories of those not used to calculate:age, time, allusions, proper nouns and other numerals;Finally, when dealing with culture-loaded words, Xu tends to adopt domestication rather than foreignization in order to provide target readers with the most fluent and readable poems as much as possible; in terms of translation methods, Xu uses free translation by means of generalization, equalization and particularization as well as literal translation. The thesis is hoped to offer some plausible translation methods for dealing with numerals in poems.