Textuality For Poetry Translation

Beaugrande and Dressler regard a text as a communicative occurrence meeting seven standards of textuality which involves factors both within and beyond language,like social,cognitive and psychological factors.The elements implied in text-based communication can be involved when seven standards of textuality are taken into consideration.It is helpful to improve the quality of poetry translation if those standards are implanted in the translated versions.Based on Chang Hen Ge and its two English versions rendered by Herbert A.Giles and Xu Yuanchong respectively,this research delves into the application of textuality for poetry translation from the angle of seven standards of textuality,focusing on whether and how the seven standards are realized in the two English versions.Through comparison of the original poem and its English versions,a judgment,based on the definitions and connotations of seven standards,is made that these standards are realized in both the two English versions.After classification,comparison and analysis,the versions are found to realize seven standards by employing the following language tactics: cohesion through personal reference,conjunction words and lexical cohesion;coherence though overt maker words;intentionality and acceptability through “pseudo” incoherence and “spurious” violation of CP,informativety through literal translation,substitution,footnotes and metonymy;situationality through particular words;and intertextuality through poetic diction.Nonetheless,there exist some differences between the two versions in terms of types and numbers of language tactics.Generally speaking,Xu's version outweighs Giles' sBased on the elaboration of the two English versions' textuality,it can be concluded that textuality can be applied for poetry translation.The focus of evaluating quality of poetry translation lies in the realization of seven standards of textuality.The application of textuality for poetry translation requires the translator,during the translation process,stand in the position of the overall text,holistically comprehend the original text with the consideration of all factors that are involved in textuality,and hence they can produce higher quality translation.