On The Rhythm Transference In Walden's Translation

Thoreau was an outstanding American writer and transcendental philosopher.Walden was the first of his prose works that have successively been translated into Chinese.It is widely acknowledged that American transcendental essayist have been famous for their advocation of Nature,while Thoreau was unique in that he had personally practiced a simple and primitive life on the bank of Walden,and he could“recognize a lot of birds,animals,and flora”,and kept “a simple and sincere account of his own life”(Thoreau,2007).Thoreau's language is as vibrant and luxuriant as the natural images and scenes that have been depicted under his pen and living in the actual natural environment,revealing his open,clear and innocent inner world and thus forming a concise,lively,pleasant and varied textual rhythm.There are more than 40 Chinese versions of Walden,but no translators and translation researchers have ever grown aware of its textual rhythm transference.I hope that through translating selected chapters of this book,explore the translation strategies and concrete methods to reproduce the rhythmic experience of the original text.This translation practice consists of three major stages,that is,pre-translation stage,translation process and post-translation modification.In the pre-translation stage,I have browsed through the relevant literature on rhythm and rhythm transference in literary translation(except for poetry translation),gaining a relatively comprehensive and in-depth understanding of rhythm and its transference and laying a good foundation for the later translation practice;Then,I have generalized the constituent features and style of Walden's textual rhythm,and on the basis of Walden's genre features and narrative style,accordingly put forward appropriate translation strategies and methods to reproduce rhythm.In translation process,I have adopted a single narrative event as the minimum unit,based on which translators analyze and transfer the textual rhythm of the original text,and respectively reproduce the constituent elements of the original textual rhythm from the prosodic,stylistic,structural and ideological levels,so as to make the rhythmic experience of the translation resemble in “spirit” with that of the original text.In the stage of post-translation modification,I have deeply experienced the original rhythmic style,and through making a comparison of several representative translations including Xu Chi's,Wang Jiaxiang's and Dai Huan's,examined the extent to which the originalrhythm has been transferred and their effectiveness in different translations,and explored the significance of rhythm transference for literary translation.