A Comparative Study Of The Image Translation For Du Fu’s Poems From The Perspective Of Intertextuality

Image is the soul of Chinese classical poetry.Du Fu’s poems represent the pinnacle of the development of Chinese classical poetry.In the documentary Du Fu: The Greatest Poet in China released by the BBC,Du Fu is praised as one of the world’s greatest poets like Shakespeare and Dante.Therefore,the study of image translation in Du Fu’s poetry is very meaningful for the policy of Chinese culture “going global”.According to Intertextuality Translation Theory,the source text and the target text are intertexts and image is a kind of intertextual signal.The cultural connotation of images is the intertextual reference behind the intertextual signals.Therefore,under the guidance of the intertextuality theory,this thesis conducts a comparative study of the image translation in the overlapping poems in Xu Yuanchong’s Selected poems of Du Fu and Stephen’s Du Fu’s Poems.It is found that Xu Yuanchong mainly translates the social images in Du Fu’s poetry freely and uses domestication translation strategy to spread Chinese poetry culture,while Stephen adopts foreignization translation strategies to translate the social images in Du Fu’s poetry with the methods of literal translation,literal translation with annotations and transliteration with annotations to spread the Chinese cultural connotation in the poetic images.From the perspective of intertextual translation,Xu Yuanchong’s translation of the images in Du’s poems better retains their semiotic status and intentionality,while Stephen’s translation better preserves the intentionality and information status of the images.The reason for their differences is that Xu Yuanchong and Stephen follow different translation principles in the process of their translation.Therefore,they use different translation strategies for the translation of images in Du Fu’s poems.