The Representation Of Buddhist Thoughts In Pauline Yu’s English Translation Of Wang Wei’s Poetry

Wang Wei (701-706), as one of the major poets in the Tang Dynasty, was knownas ’’Poetry Buddha’’ throughout the history of poetry literature. However, the difficultyof grapping with Buddhist concepts and relating them to his or her poetry translationhas discouraged a vast number of scholars and translators.This paper will focus on the rendering of Buddhist thoughts in Wang Wei’s poemsin terms of relevant images, the carriers of Buddhist concepts, by analyzing PaulineYu’s English versions. Thereafter the translator’s efforts in spreading Buddhistthoughts will be evaluated from the perspective of Reception Theory, which isintroduced into the translation field due to the shared research objects with literaturestudies. Reception aesthetics conceives the literary works as an “appealing structure”which contains many “indeterminacies” and “gaps” and await readers to accomplishthe understanding and reconstruction of the work according to their own “horizon ofexpectations”. Correspondingly, this paper puts emphasis on the role of readers,including the target readers and the translator as well.Through the exploration of the relationship between Pauline Yu’s translation ofWang Wei’s poetry and Reception Theory, the paper aims to give some suggestions.First, readers should be placed as a more important position than ever on the conditionof taking the original text into consideration. Second,“the horizon of expectations”should allow the translator to give a full play to his or her imagination as a reader.And translators should also be encouraged to adopt flexible strategies in thetranslation of Wang Wei’s poetry by first taking the target readers ‘expectation intoaccount. All in all, the Buddhist thoughts in Wang Wei’s poems can be realized in thecorresponding English versions. And during the translating process, the translatorshould adopt faithful yet flexible approaches to render the core images andterminology. In doing this, we can produce an effective translation and contribute tobridging the traditional Chinese culture with that of the world.