3。2。2。2 Comparisons between original version and translation 21
3。2。3 Analysis of Qiu’s work 26
3。2。3。1 Merits 26
3。2。3。2 Demerits 26
4。 Conclusion 26
References 27
1。 Introduction
1。1 Background
With the development of globalization, it is unavoidable to communicate between different cultures。 A lot of Chinese love to read the works of J。 K。 Rowling, and a number of foreigners are big fans of Jackie Chen。 Though nowadays English has already become the biggest foreign language in China, and some of us even can read English novels with no problem, many of us still love to read the translation works。 Needless to say, most foreigners, who totally have no idea about Chinese, would be eager for the translations。源Q于W优E尔A论S文R网wwW.yOueRw.com 原文+QQ75201,8766
Archaic Chinese poems are bright stars in Chinese literature history (叶维廉, 1992) and they influence Chinese a lot。 They were once taken as the highest accomplishment in literature in old time。 And it has been the one necessary content to test in the Chinese imperial examinations for selecting government officials for 1200 years, so all literati are poets in ancient。 (Yu & Xu, 2016) Now most Chinese still prefer to describe scenes in some poetry words。 And some even will recite poems in some special occasions in daily life。 Except that, it is showed that poetry influences tourism economy。 People prefer to visit the sites which have association with poems and some sites, in fact, also make use of poems to attract tourists。 (ibid。) Hence, it becomes more and more necessary to translate archaic Chinese poems into English。 However, it is the one of the most difficult tasks to because of the brief words and meaningful images。
Archaic Chinese is a brief and complicated language。 Most of times, one character needed to be explained by one word or short phrases in modern Chinese。 It's common to find one short line in poems (5 to 7 characters) to be explained by a long sentence in modern Chinese。 Though translation is different from explanation, especially in literature works, explanation is still the basement of it。 And some translators try to keep the feature of rhyme from the original poems, therefore some translations are much plain and tired to read, which make the translation hard to spread。 It is the biggest problem for translator now that how to make the translation poems both enjoyable to read and lose less things from the original ones。 Qiu Xiaolong's translations can't be judged as perfect, but some of them do reach the both aim of it。 In this thesis, his work is the main point to discuss。 To evaluate his works, it is necessary to think over what is the really core of archaic Chinese poems。 Hence, the poems themselves are also going to be talked later。
1。2 Qiu Xiaolong
Qiu Xiaolong is a literary translator, crime novelist, critic and academic and English-language poet。 His works include Death of a Red Heroine (Anthony Award in 2001), A Loyal Character Dancer and etc。 It is not hard to find that all his books contain a lot of quotes from archaic and modern Chinese poems and other literatures。
1。3 Purpose
There's no doubt that every translator has his/her own principles while translating。 And these principles will lead to the different focus in the process。 Some would pay more attention to the feeling which the original writers present (to the translators), and some would prefer to translate directly only if the readers could understand。 For the latter ones, the essential point in translating is preciseness。 Now most translators try to reach both of them while translating, which is not easy, and Qiu is one of them。