There's a famous saying, "语中有语，名为死句；语中无语，名为活句"。 (叶维廉, 1992)It means that if there's some words behind the words, then this line is a settled line; if there's no words behind the words, then it is a free line。 It conveys an opinion that poems are not used to tell things。 When people read good literatures, they would have a lot of different opinions towards it。 It is said one thousand readers, one thousand Hamlet。 That's the charming part of Hamlet indeed。 If A tells B the story of Hamlet in his own words and tells him/her Hamlet is a good sensitive guy。 Then for A and B, there's only one Hamlet left。 A kills other possible Hamlet in A's mind。 Therefore, if a poet writes that the sky seems sad for me so it is raining。 Then the whole scene only produce one possibility: sad。 There's no reason for reader to read it again since they can only read "sad" in it。 This line is settled。 However, if the poet writes that the sky is dark and the rain is patting the ground, then readers would see more possibilities。 The poet might be sad or feel courage again or desperate etc。 It leaves blank for reader to imagine and that also make it free。

In this way, it becomes a challenge for readers to understand them now for the change in language and situation。 Ye Weilian (1992: 70) gives some suggestions to readers。 He suggested people should not just read the poem itself。 The real poem exists in the combination of the words and also all poems, sounds and images that rush to the poets when they were writing。 This suggestion requires readers to imagine they are poets, so trying to know the background of the poems is necessary and reading more poems。

2。2 Translating archaic Chinese poems

There's an old story in China。 Once a king got an elephant which is never seen in China。 Suddenly he had an idea。 Several blind people are recruited and asked to touch the elephant。 Then the king asked them what the elephant is like。 The one who touched ivory said it was like carrot, and the one who touched ear said dustpan, and the one who touched its head said stone。 Different answers came out according to the place they touched。 People laughed at them and warned others do not judge one thing just by one side because it could be ridiculous。 However, do these healthy people really see the whole elephant? They might see its shape but they have no idea about what is inside of it。 It's not easy to know an elephant totally, needless to say poems。

Archaic Chinese poems are good at using images and create hidden meaning behind words。 It's much harder to recognize it well than identifying an elephant。 And once it is translated, the feeling might be broken and worse, there might be only one side of "elephant" is kept。 (叶维廉, 1992)

In fact, Ye Weilian insists that poems are not able to translate completely。 The perfect translator, in Ye's opinion, must be a good reader, a critic who knows everything and keeps objective at any time and a creator who is the master of language。 (叶维廉, 1992) It is unavoidable to get involved in some translators' opinion, because the premise of translating is understanding。 However, No one could guarantee that he/she understand a poem completely。

Here the difficulties of translating poems are classified into two aspects:

1) Understanding: understanding poems is not easy because knowing the meaning of the words doesn't mean understanding the poems themselves。 (叶维廉, 1992) When translators read the poems, they have to consider what the beauty representatives are and what the real meaning that these pieces have。

2) Translating: When it refers to translation, more difficulties appear。 文献综述

First of all, it requires that the translators are masters in another language and there is a way to express the meaning and beauty of the original work in another language。 The first requirements might be met by the hard-working of translators, however, the second one is almost hard to achieve。 Because Chinese and English belong to different language system and according to O。 Jespersen, Chinese is analytic language and English is synthetic language。 He defined that Analysis means suppleness, and synthesis means rigidity。 in analytic language, you have the power of kaleidoscopically arranging and rearranging the elements that in synthetic forms are in rigid connexion。 (1954: 334) Hence, Chinese is more flexible than English in grammar。 John Meskill thinks Chinese traditional philosophy thoughts have close connection with this (1973: 603)。 "Without the subject--predicate pattern in sentence structure, the Chinese did not develop the idea of the law of identity in logic。。。Instead, the Chinese develop correlational logic, analogical thought, and highly useful in sociopolitical theory。" (1973: 603) And hypotaxis is not necessary in Chinese, which is taken as the biggest differences between Chinese and English by Eugene Nida。 (1982: 16) Therefore, translators need to add hypotaxis and subjects while translating, but the problem of adding subjects is that it would kill other possibilities。 For example, in Su Shi’s poem Red Cliff (To the Tune of Niannujiao) there’s a sentence: 多情应笑我，早生华发。 It said Duoqing should laugh at me, so who is Duoqing? It can be Su himself, Su’ friend, Zhou Yu and his wife。 However, if it translated into English, only one possibility would be left。 Another difficulty is that some words or phrases cannot be found in English exactly。 Translators have to find some sentences with similar meaning。 And this compromise would change some original meaning。 That's also one of the reason that Ye thinks it's impossible to translate poems completely。 关于裘小龙先生英译诗的一二见解(4):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_195978.html