Criticism Of English Translation Of Classical Chinese Poetry: An Narrative Approach

Narrative theory has gone a long way in recent years. The definition of narrative has been expanded toinclude the simplest narrative building block—an event. And narrative theory as a powerful instrument isbeing used in more and more fields. There are feminist narratology, cognitive narratology, rhetoricalnarratology, culturalhistorical narratology etc. Some scholars in the field of translation studies have madecertain achievements in using narrative theory to study translation problems, translation events, translationsand translation criticism. These researches mainly focus on fiction translation. Few of them are concernedwith poetry translation. Considering there are also large quantities of micro-narratives in classic Chinesepoetry, it will bring new enlightenment to poetry translation if we study them from a narrative perspective.On account of classic Chinese poetry is quite different from western poetry in tempo, rhyme and style,how to skillfully translate the classic Chinese poetry into English is the most challenging task on the part ofthe translator and it is the most popular subject in translation studies all the time. In this thesis based on thearguments of H. Porter Abbott the author will try to put forward a narrative model to study Englishtranslation of classic Chinese poetry. The order of the elements in this model is arranged according to theprocess of translation. Applying this model we can analyze different translations in the aspects of entities,events and three concepts closely connected with the narrator, namely voice, focalization and distance. Themodel is discussed concretely in the three model case studies.It is usually believed that transferring the contents of poetry is comparatively easier while transferringthe form of Chinese poetry is more difficult. However using this narrative model for criticism of translationof classic Chinese poetry we may find it is not the case at all. This model can not only help us find outwhere the problem is but also make us understand why we favor one translation over another and thereby improve the quality of translation.