A Study Of The Chinese Translation Of Raymond Carver’s Poetry Based On The Variation Theory

Raymond Carver is both a great novelist and a brilliant poet.Through his lifetime,not only does he write several well-known collections of short stories,but also finishes six poetic collections,including more than 300 poems.Raymond Carver’s poetry is as good as his fiction.But Carver as a poet still fails to receive enough attention from the Chinese audience.As such,his poetry should receive more attention and importance.The study of Carver in China began in 1986,and the translation of Carver’s poetry began at the same time.In 2013,a Chinese translation of All of Us: The Completed Poems of Raymond Carver was finally published.These Chinese translators not only translated Carver’s poetry into China,but also played a significant role in promoting the dissemination and acceptance of Carver’s poetry in China.The translators not only influenced the way and form of Carver’s poetry in China,but also determined the current situation of the acceptance of Carver’s poetry in China to a certain extent.So far,Carver’s poetry has not attracted much attention and response in China.The quality of the Chinese translation of the poems should be one of the important factors affecting the dissemination and acceptance of Carver’s poetry in China.To this end,we use the theory of comparative literary variation to analyse and explain the variation in Shu’s translation and its specific causes,taking All of Us: The Completed Poems of Raymond Carver and its Chinese translation by Shu Dandan as the main object of study and comparing the translated poems of other Chinese translators.The study finds that Shu Dandan’s translation of Carver’s poetry is characterised by complex variations in language,imagery and form.Specifically,the linguistic variation in the poems is mainly due to the ambiguity in the understanding of the semantics of the words and the organisation of the syntactic order.The rich uncertainty of Carver’s poetry and the dynamism of the translator’s subject have contributed to the ambiguity and multiplicity of meanings in the interpretation of the Chinese-translated text,and therefore to the variation in the language of the poem.The variation at the level of imagery is mainly reflected in the loss,Sinicisation and superficiality of the cultural messages,deep metaphors and symbolic connotations contained in the natural and electrical imagery.The reason for this is the heterogeneity of Chinese and American culture,which is reflected in the fact that the poetic imagery reflects and condenses the connotations of the American West and its spirit,reflecting the social reality and cultural and ideological dilemmas of the twentieth century American post-industrial era.The translator’s grasp and processing of the imagery and its cultural message has led to the creation of variations.The variation at the formal level of the poems is mainly manifested in the transformation of structural forms and the expression of poetic rhyme.The source of the variation should,on the one hand,be attributed to the poet-translator’s own conception of poetry,the creative translation guided by the concept of poetry translation and its strategies,and on the other hand,the phonetic treatment of English poetry into Chinese should be taken into consideration.The study of the variation in Chinese translations of Carver’s poetry and its causes is not only an attempt to consider and solve the problem of the quality of Chinese translations,but also to uncover the rich artistic achievements,poetic and cultural values of Carver’s poetry,in order to achieve a wider and deeper dissemination and influence of Carver’s poetry in China.