This thesis will analyze two English versions of “Shui Diao Ge Tou” based on gestalt theory and hope to open a new vision on contrastive study on ci-poetry translation。 

1。3 Structure of the Study

This thesis is organized in following four chapters:

Chapter 1 is an introduction。 It emphasizes the background, significance and structure of this thesis。

Chapter 2 is a literature review of former researches on Gestalt Theory and its application on translation。

Chapter 3 is the main body of paper。 This chapter compares the “Shui Diao Ge Tou” translations from the perspective of three laws of Gestalt Theory。

Chapter 4 ends the paper with the result of comparisopn and some suggestions。

2。 Literature Review

2。1 Gestalt Theory

2。1。1 An overview on Gestalt Theory 文献综述

Gestalt Theory originated from Gestalt psychology, one of the most important schools of contemporary western psychology。 Gestalt psychology emerged in Australia and Germany at the end of the 19th century and was pushed by the works of Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler and Kurt Koffka in the beginning of 20th century。 Gestalt theory began in 1912 with Wertheimer’s experiment of “apparent movement” phenomenon。 The “gestalt” is originally a German word introduced in 1890 in the paper “On Gestalt Qualities” by the Austrian philosopher and psychologist Christian Von Ehrenfels。 Kohler (1929) thinks the word gestalt has the meaning of a concrete inpidual and characteristic entity, existing as something detached and having a shape or form as one of its attitude。 Koffka (1935) also presented that a gestalt is a product of organization, organization opposed to mere juxtaposition or random distribution, in the process of which what happens to a part of the whole is determined by intrinsic laws inherent in this whole (Kofka 1935:72)。 To say that a product of a process is a gestalt means that it can not be explained by mere chaos, the mere blind combination of essentially unconnected causes。 Initially, Gestalt psychology was a revolt against Wundt and Titcherter’s structuralism where experience was reduced to inpidual parts, but later the revolt was directed against behaviorism’s reduction of experience to simple stimulus-response reflexes (Kofka 1935:14)。 Wertheim adopts this German word as the following understanding: