英语语言文学硕士论文-英译中国古典诗词中的意象翻译研究.pdf

重庆大学硕士学位论文 中文摘要 i 摘 要 诗歌是语言的精华，而意象是诗歌的灵魂。意象的传译是古诗英译中传达“意 美”的关键。本论文立足中国传统的意象理论，结合中外学者从意象角度研究诗 歌翻译的成果， 对英译中国古典诗词中意象的可译性, 翻译原则和策略进行了初步 的系统研究。 第一章为引言。中国古典诗歌英译已有百年以上的历史，在此实践基础上诗 歌翻译研究者们主要从三种途径对诗歌翻译进行了研究，即语言学途径，文化途 径和诗学途径。本文立足诗学中的意象研究成果，结合语言和文化因素对中国古 典诗歌英译中的意象翻译进行研究。 第二章是文献综述。分别回顾了中国和西方传统文论中对意象概念的阐释和 论述，接着就中国学者对诗歌中的意象翻译研究现状进行了综述。在此基础上作 者分析了现有研究存在的有待解决的课题以及本文所采用的研究视角。 第三章全面描述中国古典诗歌中的意象。在总结中外学者有关意象概念的论 述的基础上，作者对本文提到的意象概念进行了界定，强调本文主要讨论的意象 概念是已经物化成语言符号的饱含诗人思想感情的诗歌形象，而非诗人创作构思 时出现在头脑中的“意中之象” 。后者与诗人的形象思维密切相关，但只是作为本 研究立论的基础，而非讨论的重点所在。为使读者对意象概念的理解更加全面和 深入，文章对其分类和功能进行了阐释。 第四章讨论意象的可译性及其限度。意象从总体上说是可译的，中英诗歌中 运用意象的共同传统构成了意象可译性的实践基础。本文文献综述中所提双方对 意象的重要论述则是其理论基础。本世纪二十年代兴起的英美意象派对中英诗人 产生的巨大影响同样证明了双方在意象层面上进行交流的可能性。但由于中英文 化差异，其可译性又是具有一定限度的。文章从文化角度讨论了难译或不可译的 意象。 第五章探讨意象翻译的原则和策略。许钧教授提出了翻译可以分为思维，语 义和审美三层次的观点。诗人和读者头脑中形成的意象是诗歌创作和欣赏的思维 单位，而物化成语言符号的意象则是中国古典诗歌的意义单位和审美单位，在翻 译意象应当遵循意义对等和意象审美功能对等的原则。原诗意象的意义主要由指 称意义和联想意义组成，翻译时应将两方面意义有机结合起来，特别是在翻译联 想意义时，应充分考虑译入语文化的接受程度，在传播中华文化与译本的广泛接 受之间找到最佳的平衡点。在上述原则的指导下，文章提出了相应的翻译策略， 主要包括保留原有意象，替换成译入语文化可以接受的意象以及省略意象三大类， 重庆大学硕士学位论文 中文摘要 ii 其中又可细分为一些小类，作者对每类方法均以例说明并指出其长处与不足。意 象翻译的最高层次是审美层次。在此层次上须遵循审美功能对等的原则，努力传 达意象及其组合的审美特征。意象的审美特征按其诉诸途径体现在感官和情感两 个层面。文章举例阐述了这两方面的审美特征，并通过对不同译文的对比研究对 其传译策略进行了论证。 第六章为结论。总结本论文的主要内容和观点，提出本研究的局限及有待进 一步研究的课题。 关键词：意象翻译，古诗英译，可译性，翻译原则，翻译策略 重庆大学硕士学位论文 abstract iii abstract imagery is the soul of poetry. on the basis of the imagery theory in chinese conventional literary documents and the research findings on poetry translation from the aspect of imagery made by the previous scholars both at home and abroad, this dissertation makes a comparatively systematic study on the transference of imagery in c-e translation of chinese classical poetry from the angle of its translatability, translation principles and strategies. imagery is the key to conveying the beauty in sense in c-e translation of chinese classical poetry. by exploring the origin and development of the notion of “yi xiang” in china and its counterpart “imagery” in the west, the author summarizes the definition of imagery in the present study. after that the paper presents the categorization of imagery in chinese classical poetry and its multiple functions in order to make the notion more full-fledged. generally speaking, imagery is translatable. the factors that contribute to the translatability of imagery mainly include four aspects. first, thinking in terms of images is common in both western and chinese poetic composition. second, there is a common convention of adopting imagery in english and chinese poetry. the third is the common tradition of theoretical studies on imagery in english and chinese poetic circles. the fourth is the influence of imagism upon the western and chinese poetic circles. however, due to cultural difference between chinese and anglo-american nations, the translatability is limited to some extent. some examples are offered to show the limitation of translatability on account of cultural differences. professor xu jun has proposed three levels of translation, namely, the thinking level, semantic level and aesthetic level. the commonality between english and chinese poetry at the thinking level constitutes the basis for the translatability of imagery. imagery materialized in linguistic symbols can be regarded as the basic unit for both semantic level and aesthetic level. as for the translation of imagery at the two levels, there are different principles and strategies for each of them. at the semantic level, the translator should follow the principle of semantic equivalence and adopt such translation strategies as preserving, changing and omitting the images. these strategies can be subdivided into more specific ones and illustrated with examples. at the aesthetic level, the translator should try to achieve equivalence in aesthetic function of 重庆大学硕士学位论文 abstract iv imagery between sl and tl text. the aesthetic function of imagery in poetry mainly lies in two aspects, namely, it can give the tl readers aesthetic enjoyment at two levels, one being the sensuous level, the other the level of emotion. the dissertation analyzes the beauty of imagery at the two levels with examples selected from chinese classical poems and then explores corresponding translation strategies by making comparative studies on the different versions for those poems. key words: imagery transference, c-e translation of chinese classical poetry, translatability, translation principles, translation strategy 重庆大学硕士学位论文 chapter one introduction 1 chapter one introduction “difficult and complex as verse translation from chinese into english is, different versions began to appear as early as the 18th century.” (xu, 1992:1) till the mid 20th century, the participants of english translation of chinese classical poems were mainly native english speakers: james legge, herbert allen giles, arthur waley, etc. they paved the way for later poem translators. following them, some native chinese translators such as xu yuanzhong, weng xianliang, wang rongpei, wu juntao, gong jinghao, zhu chunshen, etc, began their english translation of chinese classical poems and this marked a new era. they translated chinese classical works in large quantities. on the basis of the practice, the translators or translation researchers have advanced theories from various approaches. these approaches can be roughly divided into three: linguistic approach, cultural approach and poetic approach. some researchers deal with the original work from the linguistic aspect. chinese classical poems are not quite grammatically composed. furthermore, chinese characters are basically hieroglyphic. in translation process, some translators make use of these characteristics of chinese poems to make the translation more vivid and concise. some translation researchers have also made detailed studies on these features and their translation. following the gradual awareness of the cultural difference in intercultural communication, the cultural gaps in poem translation draw more and more attention. translators began to discuss poem translation in the perspective of the cultural gaps in imagery, the cultural meaning of words and the allusion，etc. other translators find access to poem translation from the aspect of poetics. they begin from the traditional poetic registers: form, imagery, musicality, figure of speech, etc. all of these approaches are sure to help enrich the theories of poetry translation. imagery is the representation of sense experience through language. it plays an extremely important role in poetic composition and appreciation. it is also one of the commonalities shared between western and chinese poetic circles. with the flourish of english translation of chinese classical poems, the study of imagery transference has also aroused great interest from the academic circle. being aware of its importance, the author chooses the present topic and plans to make a tentative study on this issue. as the notion of imagery is a significant one in poetic study, especially in chinese conventional poetic study, this dissertation will mainly form its basis on the conventional chinese 重庆大学硕士学位论文 chapter one introduction 2 poetic study with relevant linguistic and cultural factors taken into consideration. thus its research approach is an organic integration of the three with the poetic approach playing the leading role. in order to make the readers have a clear clue of the whole dissertation, it is necessary to have a birds view first. besides introduction, there are five chapters. chapter two is literature review. after reviewing the current situation of studies on the transference of imagery in classical chinese poetry, the author analyzes the problems that remain to be solved and points out the research angle of this dissertation. chapter three gives a general account of imagery in classical chinese poetry, including its categorization, ways of combination and main functions in chinese classical poems. chapter four discusses the translatability of imagery in classical chinese poetry. chapter five elaborates on the principles and strategies for imagery translation at the semantic and aesthetic level respectively. chapter six concludes the whole dissertation. the author will summarize the main idea of the dissertation and point out its limitations as well as some relevant research topics for further study. 重庆大学硕士学位论文 chapter two literature review 3 chapter two literature review 2.1 the origin and development of imagery theory in china ever since the time of confucius, the concept of “yi xiang” ( “意象” in chinese , “imagery” in english) has been attached great importance by chinese theorists. the two characters “意”( “yi” ， meaning “idea”) and “象” ( “xiang” , “appearance, shape, image”) were originally used in separation in the book of changes (yi jing，易经) ,which is thought to be a philosophical work reflecting early peoples mode of thinking in which different images were used to denote natural phenomena. some statements in the appended statements ( xi ci ,系辞) for the book of changes were frequently cited in literary thoughts: 子曰： “书不尽言，言不尽意。 ”然则圣人之意，其不可见乎？ 子曰： “圣人立象以尽意，设卦以尽情伪，系辞焉以尽其言。 ” he said, “what is written does not give the fullness of what is/was said (yen); what is/was said does not give the fullness of the concept in the mind (yi).” “if this is so, then does it mean that the concepts in the minds of the sages cannot be perceived?” he said, “the sages established the images (xiang) to give the fullness of the concepts in their minds, and they set up the hexagrams to give the fullness of what is true and false in a situation (qing); to these they appended statements (xi ci ) to give the fullness of what was said” (owen, 1992:31) this passage discloses the relation among “the concept in the mind”(yi), “images”(xiang) and “what is/was said”(yan). from the literary point of view, “images” are objects in nature or relating to human life which can be regarded as materials for thought; “the concept in the mind” (yi) is the content of thought; and “what is/was said” (yan) is the result of thought in written form. as we can see here, chinese people believe that the inner can indeed be known from the outer manifestation. liu xie (465-520), a noted chinese classical literary theorist, was the first person who used “yi” and “xiang” together and made the notion of “yi xiang” as a formal literary term in his famous monograph carving the dragon with literary mind（wen xin diao long; 文心雕龙 ）. the sentence which has mentioned “yi xiang” goes like 重庆大学硕士学位论文 chapter two literature review 4 this, “使玄解之宰，寻声律而定墨；独照之匠，窥意象而运斤”(qtd in chen，1986： 14)（only then can the butcher, who cut things apart mysteriously, set the pattern according to the rules of sound; and the uniquely discerning carpenter wield his ax with his eye to the concept-imagetr. by myself）liu compared literary composition , especially poetry writing to the job of the butcher or carpenter. there are always two most important aspects that a poet must bear in mind, one being mental image（意象）, and the other musicality（声律）. later in tang dynasty, wang chang-ling (698-756) stated that imagery was the combination of the subjective and objective. in ming dynasty, hu ying-ling (1551-1602) believed that “the essence of the classic poetry lies in the arrangement of imagery(古诗 之妙，专求意象).” (commentaries on poetry) （zhu, 1996:3） wang fu-zhi, another influential scholar in ming dynasty, has made an in-depth and systematic analysis on the features of aesthetic imagery in poems. these features include the integrity, authenticity, ambiguity and originality. (ye, 1985:466-478) in modern times, some famous scholars like zhu guang-qian (1984), yuan xingpei(1996) have contributed some original and cogent arguments on imagery. zhu guangqian regards sentiment (情 趣) and imagery(意象) as two inseparable parts in constituting the artistic realm of poems. yuan xing-pei points out that although “yi xiang” is an aboriginal notion in chinese conventional literary theory, it has no definite connotation and unanimous usage. sometimes it refers to the mental image in the poets mind when he or she is conceiving a poem, which is represented by liu xies words as mentioned above. other commentators adopted this notion to give comments on various artistic forms like poetry, calligraphy and paintings. some scholars even mixed the two important notions “yi xiang (imagery)” and “yi jing (ideorealm)” together without distinguishing them clearly. in one word, the notion of “yi xiang” shares a common feature with other notions in conventional chinese literary theory, that is, few of them have exact definitions. professor yuan has analyzed the relationship between the notion of “yi xiang” and other relevant notions like “wu xiang” (objective image), “yi jing” (ideorealm), which is an effective attempt to clarify the notion in the context of chinese classical poetry. some other scholars like chen zhi-e (1986), wang chang-jun (2000) and yan yun-shou (2003) have wrote monographs to expound on imagery in chinese poetry. their analyses have dealt with such problems as its origin, definition, classification, ways of combining images, its aesthetic and cultural features, and so on. these contributions can give the present study a lot of inspirations on the understanding of imagery. another important 重庆大学硕士学位论文 chapter two literature review 5 reference book is zhu huis comparative studies on the art of chinese and english poetry (1996), which contributes the first chapter to make a comparative study on the imagery between chinese and english poetry. this study is more significant for our present study since translation always benefits a lot from comparative studies between the source language (sl) and target language (tl) text. 2.2 arguments on imagery in western poetic study in the west, there has also been a time-honored awareness of the significance of imagery in poetic creation. g. e. lessing (1729-1781) said that imagery was the sensuous impression produced in poetry (laocoon, qtd in zhu，1996：20). robert frost (1874-1963) suggested that “image and after-imagery are about all there is to poetry”. (jay, 1987:27) the school of imagism that appeared in america in the 1920s not only translated a large quantity of chinese classical poems, but also imitated the ways adopted by the chinese classical poets to compose new poems in english. the ways were mainly concerned with how to choose and arrange imagery in composing a poem. ezra pound and amy lowell were the most well-known imagists. ezra pound (1885-1973) defined imagery as “an intellectual and emotional complex” and emphasized it to such an extent that he claimed “it is better to present one image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous works.” (a retrospect, qtd in zhu, 1996: 20) another acknowledged leader of the new verse and criticism both in american and britain, t.s. eliot (1888-1965), developed this notion into his principle of “objective correlative”: the only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an objective correlative; in other words, a set of objects, a chain of events which, shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external acts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given the emotion is immediately evoked. (chang, 1990: 244) rene wellek (1903- ) in his theory of literature suggests that imagery is one componential structure of poem. (zhu, 1996:20) 2.3 current studies on the translation of imagery in poetry some famous poetry translators in china have pointed out the importance of imagery in poetry translation. xu yuanzhongs principle of “three-aspected beauty” puts the beauty in sense in the first place, which is mainly conveyed through imagery. weng 重庆大学硕士学位论文 chapter two literature review 6 xianliang stresses that the true coloring of poetry translation lies in imagery. (editorial department of chinese translators journal,1986：285-286) on some academic journals, there have appeared a number of articles which tackle the problem of imagery transference in poetry. zhang baohong （1994） discusses the reproduction of imagery in terms of its broad sense and narrow one. xin xianyun （2001）focuses on the adaptive methods for the translation of imagery in poetry by dividing them into figurative and non-figurative imagery. xi hualin （2001）examines the ways to mutual exchange and translation between chinese and english poems by applying some key concepts proposed by western imagists, such as image hosition, synaesthsia and image separation, into the poetry translation practice. wei jiahai (2002,2003) has published two articles centering on the translation of imagery in classical chinese poetry. one of them probes into the foregrounding of temporal imagery in c-e translation of classical chinese poetry. another article argues that image can be considered as the cardinal unit of translation and other units such as phonemes, words, sentences, paragraphs, texts and culture as the supplementary units of translation. in addition, some candidates for master or doctorial degree wholly or partially involve their dissertations with the notion of imagery in translation. liang yanhua (2002) studies color images in tang-song poetry and their translation. zhang ruguis dissertation (2003) argues that imagery can be the unit of translation in chinese classical poetry translation. the dissertation entitled a tentative probe into the transference of artistic ideorealm in the translation of classical chinese poetry written by chen yuehong(2002) partly involves itself with the translation of imagery. jiang qiuxias doctorial dissertation (2002) focuses its attention on the actualization of image-gestalt in literary translation on the basis of gestalt theory in aesthetic psychology with the aid of methodology from linguistics, literary theory, aesthetics, cognitive psychology and reading theory. 2.4 summary as the above revie