On Translation Of Figures Of Speech In The Classic Of Tea

Rhetoric undergoes in accordance with the theme and emotional appeal of literary works, adding beauty and taste to the language form of the text in addition to its content. In translation process, form conformity and function uniformity are sometimes regarded as a pair of contradictory requirements, especially in translating Chinese classical works. Figurative language is universal, but it is difficult for a particular figure of speech in one language to match that of another. Such dissimilarities in both language and culture bring about more barriers to the translation process, as is the especial case in classical Chinese translation. Aiming at the very challenge, this dissertation tries to explore the translation methods for figures of speech in The Classic of Tea, approaching the point via Nida’s translation theories of "functional equivalence" and "readers’response theory". Through the discussion of several typical cases in The Classic of Tea, the dissertation first analyzes the cultural elements reflected in the figures of speech in Chinese classic literature and then compares the Chinese culture with its counterpart in the West as reflected in using figures of speech. As a result, the thesis sums up a few methods and strategies in the translation of figures of speech in Chinese classic literature. Based on all these, the author tries to better the translation to a real extent of functional equivalence.This dissertation is divided into the following five parts:the first is a brief introduction of the whole thesis, presenting the translation work of The Classic of Tea, pointing out the purposes and implication of the study, and listing out the research difficulties and research methodologies.Literature review makes the second part of the thesis. It illustrates the similarities and discrepancies between figures of speech in Chinese and English, together with the differences in their background cultures. Then, it underlines the content with Nida’s translation theories of "functional equivalence" and "readers’response theory". The author means to propose that the tiptop figures of speech translation in Chinese classic literature should try to be both equivalents in the content of meaning and in the form of message with that in English as much as possible. In order to achieve cross-cultural communication, translators should surmount the cultural "distance" or "gap" in figures of speech translation embedded in Chinese and western cultures. Moreover, there are no such translation theories or formulas as perfect in any cases. Thus, translators should adopt translation methods and theories flexibly and holistically into translation practices. The third part mainly focuses on analyzing the translation examples of figures of speech in The Classic of Tea, classifying the figures of speech into four categories: figures of speech in the perspective of materials, figures of speech in the perspective of emotional appeals, figures of speech at the lexical level, and figures of speech at the syntactic level, based on the classification of Chen Wangdao, the most representative authoritative work of Chinese modern rhetoric study, and using the English version of The Classic of Tea translated by Jiang Yi and Jiang Xin, from the Series of the Library of Chinese Classics as corpus. The thesis then compare it to the translation methods of other Chinese classic works, thus coming up with relatively more appropriate translation methods in the author’s eyes.The fourth part analyzes the relatively "untranslatable" figures of speech in The Classic of Tea both in the aspect of culture and linguistics. Such figures of speech do exist because of the discrepancies between the two cultures and languages. In this thesis, the author has summarized four solutions for the relatively untranslatable figures of speech:explanatory notes or back-grounding, bridging the rhetorical gap, striding across rhetorical devices, and compensating with other figures of speech.The last part is the conclusion of the main viewpoints in the thesis:most of the figures of speech in Chinese classic literature are translatable and could be retained a relative equivalence both in the content of meaning and in the form of message. On the other hand, despite the discrepancies of cultures between Chinese and the western countries, untranslatable figures of speech are impermanent and limited. Both culture and language are ever changing. The system of language is open with fuzzy boundaries and overlapping meanings, thus there is no timeless or completely perfect translation. Some of the figures of speech in Chinese classic literature are relatively untranslatable today, but they may be understood better as to become translatable in the future. Furthermore, there are more and more translators dedicated to the complex but fascinating task of transferring pure Chinese tastes to the world.