A Comparative Study Of The Chinese Version Of "The Flower Of Evil"

As the pioneer of symbolist poetry,Charles Baudelaire is the most famous modern poet in the nineteenth century in France and he occupies a very important place in the poetic field of Europe or even the whole world.His masterpiece The Flowers of Evil is a typical symbolist work which made him the first man to break the tradition.The publication of this poem collection marks the appearance of symbolism and modern literature.Chinese poets and translators are really interested in this work.Since the 1920s,Zhou Zuoren(???),Xu Zhimo(???),Chen Jingrong(???)and Dai Wangshu(???)have translated it successively.After the founding of China,the translation of Qian Chunqi(???),Zheng Kelu(???),Zhang Qiuhong(???),Guo Hong'an(???)and Liu Nanqi(???)also came on the scene.The degree of reception by the reader is different.Among the discussion of readers,words like "form" "meaning" "equivalence" are often mentioned.Such phenomenon indicates that the reader nowadays needs to criticize a literary translation from the theoretical perspective.It is exactly the development of translation theory that brings this progress.In 1975,George Steiner,an American scholar born in France,published After Babel:Aspects of Language and Translation in which he presents the hermeneutic theory of the fourfold translation motion.Because of this theory,the study of translation is infused with new vitality.This paper chose 4 Chinese versions of The Flowers of Evil to be the object of a comparative study under the hermeneutic view.Through the study below,we can observe the actual application of George Steiner's hermeneutic theory and find the different style of those translations.In a sense,this paper could be used as a reference for the reader to choose the version they prefer and,moreover,show my own thoughts about the study of poetic translation.In the introduction part,the thesis presents firstly the discussion about translatability and untranslatability of poetry,introduces next the hermeneutical theory of George Steiner,and then describes the history of poetic translation in China,including the French poetry.The introduction indicates in the end that the paper will expand its study by targeting 4 Chinese versions of The Flowers of Evil.The first chapter teases out the origin and the development of hermeneutics,then presents in detail the hermeneutical theory of George Steiner,and explains at the end the effect of hermeneutics in translation.The second chapter is about Baudelaire and The Flowers of Evil.The first part of this chapter presents the life of Baudelaire and his masterpiece,and also analyzes the reception of Baudelaire in China.The second part describes respectively the 4 translators and their translation and explains the reason for such choice.The third chapter is the core of this paper."Trust" "aggression" "appropriation""compensation" of the fourfold motions are the entries of the comparative study.Through the comparison,the characteristics of each translation and the limits of the fourfold motions of George Steiner are both appeared.In the conclusion,it is estimated that all these 4 translations have confidence in The Flowers of Evil,which is why they choose it as the object of the translation,but during the process of aggression and appropriation,the relative degree is varied according to their different logic,motivation and cultural context.Dai attacks a lot on the original and has the most incorporation from it,while Qian and Guo find a balance between aggression and appropriation.Different from those 3 translators,Liu incorporates the meaning with a great creation.As a result,the form of Dai's version is the closest to the original,while the translation of Guo and Qian is generally the most faithful,and the style of Liu belongs to the free translation.The conclusion indicates,moreover,the limits of the hermeneutical model during the analysis of poetry translation.But thanks to these limits,the study of translation still has a large space to explore.