The Features of English Poem Translation and the Problems to be Noted.docx

the features of english poem translation and the problems to be notedabstract：this paper aims at the exploration of the features of english poem translation and makes a discussion of two specific problems through the practice of english poem translation. it starts with a general background, in which current situation, importance and translatability of poem translation are summarized. after an analysis, we found that xu yuanchongs poem beauty theory is too general and lacks many important characteristics of poetry while that by gu zhengkun overlaps a little. based on the detailed analysis of more materials, we come up with the perspective of five beauties of poetry, namely beauty in emotion, style, sound, form and meaning to summarize the main characteristics of poetry since beauty is shared by any language and people. however, it is not easy to maintain these beauties so equivalently in the other language. in order to keep the beauties in the translation, we mentioned the five skills for translating these five features: the equivalent transform of emotion beauty, style beauty, sound beauty, form beauty and meaning beauty. as for the two concrete problems of poem translation, this paper suggests two methods to deal with these problems in translation, that is, to render poetic foot into dun and to translate old forms of english poems into modern ones, rather than into five-or-seven-character tang poems.keywords: english poem translation features poetry beauty poetic foot poetic form 诗歌翻译的特点及应注意的问题摘要:本文旨在探索英文诗歌翻译的特点以及在具体的翻译实践中应注意的细节问题。在文章开始，作者首先对诗歌翻译的背景，如诗歌翻译的现状、重要性以及诗歌的可译性问题进行了探讨。根据英文诗歌本身所具备的特点，以及对著名翻译家许渊冲和辜正坤的诗歌翻译理论进行的分析，我们发现许渊冲的诗歌美观点过于概括，忽略了很多重要的诗歌特点。而辜正坤的相应观点又有一些内部重复。经过对更多材料的进一步分析，我们提出了新的“诗歌美-感情美，风格美，音乐美，外形美，意味美”。鉴于诗歌语言这么多的美学因素，想要在目标语中重现它们相当不易。为了使之在翻译中得以保留，我们提出了相应的翻译对策：即诗歌感情美、风格美、音乐美、外形美、意味美在翻译中的等值转换技巧。对于怎样处理一些诗歌翻译中存在的具体问题，我们也找到了相应的处理方法，即把英文诗歌的音步翻译成中文的音顿；把古体英文诗形翻译成近体诗，而不是会因韵害意的五言、七言体唐诗。关键词：英语诗歌翻译 特点 诗歌美 音步 诗形1. background1.1 the importance of poem translation“neruda (1) saw the role of the poet as speaking for those who had no power to speak. the poet, for him, gave a voice to the voiceless.”(bassnett, 2001: 58) poetry, at the same time, became the means used by poets to express their feelings ever since the first poem appeared in the world. without doubt, it is the laboring people who invented poetry. as time goes by, people use poems to do more and more different things. they use poems to express feelings, to convey ambitions, to record events, to portray sceneries, to imagine the future, and so on and so forth. as an inalienable part of translation and specifically, a part of literary translation, poem translation has its corresponding importance in cross cultural communications-to know the life of a different person, to recognize the events happened in a different nation, to enjoy the fabulous sceneries in a different land, to understand a foreign poem pattern-all in all, to get familiar with a different culture by special features of poetry: strong emotion, beautiful sound patterns, regular poetic forms(2), rich imaginations, concise and elegant languages, etc. 1.2 current situation of poem translation along with the arrival of the 21st century, the world came to a new era of development. cross-national communications take place from time to time and have reached nearly every aspect of our work and life. under this background, translation has been brought to an unprecedented vital position. english poem translation, as an inseparable part of translation, has also produced a prosperous look , owing to the advent of many distinguished poem translators. there are many forerunners in this field, such as su manshu, ma junwu, guo moruo, bian zhilin. among them, xu yuanchong has made magnificent contributions to both the practice and theory of poem translation. his works of poems from chinese to english has been recognized as the masterpiece in english literature. however, its a pity that little effort has been made by translators from english speaking countries to translate english poems into chinese, but some effort to translate chinese poems to english and much more into english to european languages, just as xu yuanchong pointed out in 2001, “up to now, there is no westerner who has ever published a chinese to english and english to chinese literary work, so westerners can not propose any theories for settling the problems in this field of translation.” nevertheless, chinese scholars have made much more contributions to rendering english poems into chinese.1.3 translatability of poetrypoem translation has been in a very embarrassing situation since its coming into being. there have always been fierce debates on the matter of poem translatability. famous american poet robert frost once said: “poetry is what gets lost in translation”. however, many other scholars hold totally different opinions; and they argue that poetry can and must be translated. “practice is the sole criterion for testing truth.” many poem translators successful practice has told us the truth. ezra pounds translation of the great tang dynasty poet li bais poems is the first light of the morning for westerners to translate chinese poetry. later, more and more scholars devoted themselves to this cause, either from chinese to english or from english to chinese. among them, su manshu, bian zhilin and xu yuanchong are the best ones. in this aspect, we are in favor of gu zhengkuns view, which is more scientific and reasonable. he believes that poetry is translatable, untranslatable and also half-translatable depending on which standard we use to solve this problem. “if the standard is whether meaning beauty can be transmitted, most poems are translatable; if the standard is whether form beauty can be transmitted, some poems are translatable and some are half-translatable; if the standard is whether sound beauty can be transmitted, all poems are untranslatable (surely we can make the translated chinese version also contain sound beauty, but its the sound beauty of chinese poetry, not that of the original, which should not be confusedly taken as one).” (gu, 2003: 376) just as what shelly argued, “though a poem cannot be transfused from one language to another, it can nevertheless be transplanted. the seed can be placed in a new soil, for a new plant to develop. the task of the translator must then be to determine and locate that seed and to set about its transplantation.” (bassnett, 2001:58) in the following parts, we will make a careful analysis of the theories on poetry beauty by xu yuanchong and gu zhengkun and a detailed discussion about the features of poetry, then we will have a new comprehension on poetry beauty. finally, we will see how to deal with two specific problems in the actual practice of poem translation, that is, how to translate poetic foot and poetic forms in english poems. 2. literature review2.1 xu yuanchongs view on poem translationxu yuanchong, a professor of beijing university on literary translation, is a great poem translation artist who has contributed gorgeously to chinese poetry translation into english and french. due to his brilliant achievements, he is recognized as the excellent expert in this field. xu put forward many theories and skills for chinese poem translation, which can also be applied to english poem translation. he (2006) argues that both the practice and theories of literary translation are arts since science investigates truth while art investigates beauty. a formula to illustrate this may be like that: science studies 1+1=2, 3-2=1, while art studies 1+12. that is because literary translation does not only translate words, but also translate meanings; and it does not only translate meanings, but also translate tastes. translating words rather than meaning is called “similarity in form”-1+12 or 1+1=3. this is one theory of xus, called “three similarities”.(xu，2006：8) for example, the first sentence of shelleys a lament and one version of translation: 1. o world! o life! o time!2. 哦时间！ 哦人生！哦世界！（江枫译）“哦” means sudden enlightenment or comprehension while “o” is an exclamation here. this is called “similarity in form” failing to reach “similarity in meaning”-1+12). (xu, 2006: 8)“three situations (3)”, “three transmissions (4)” and “three beauties (5)” are the epistemology (6), methodology (7) and ontology (8) of xu yuanchongs poem translation theory respectively (2006). if you want to exert the “superior situation”, you use “particularization”; if you want to fight for an “equal situation”, you use “equalization”; and if you want to change the “inferior situation”, you use “generalization”. “to know it is not as good as to love it; to love it is not as good as to find delight in it (9)” is xus teleology (10) for poem translation. 2.2 gu zhengkuns view on english poem translationgu zhengkun, famous professor of beijing foreign studies university on both translation and poetics, has carried out many researches and also put forward several new and excellent theories in this field. on the issue of poem translatability, he (2003) holds the view that poetry is translatable, untranslatable and also half-translatable, which has been discussed above in 1.3. on the issue of how to render english poems into chinese, he provides two new theories: one is the five beauties of poetry (11), namely beauty in form, sound, meaning, story and taste; the other is the color-increasing and color-decreasing theory (12). gu zhengkuns view on poem beauty has two more points than that of xu yuanchongs. they are story and taste beauties. in gus opinion, story beauty is the beauty produced in readers minds by the literary quotations, story plot and structure of the poem. taste beauty is the common name of poetrys beauty in style, temperament and emotion, etc. as to the color-increasing and color-decreasing theory, its fundamental principle is: chinese is a descriptive language while english is a logical one. chinese is rich in gorgeous modifiers while languages from indo-european family are short of that. as a result, once an ordinary english poem is rendered into chinese, it will be much richer in literary grace than the original. this is whats called color-increasing translation. (gu, 2003 432-434) consequently, in our process of translating english poems, we should pay attention to this issue and make proper changes according to the literary grace of the original. 2.3 analysis of the theories by xu and gu on the basis of the features of poetry2.3.1 features of poetryfirst of all, what is poetry? no one can give us a comprehensive answer. perhaps the little poem authored by eleanorfarjeon (1938) can throw a light: what is poetry? who knows?not a rose, but the scent of the rose;not the sky, but the light in the sky;not the fly, but the gleam of the fly;not the sea, but the sound of the sea;not myself, but what makes mesee, hear, and feel something that prose cannot: and what it is, who knows?yes, who knows what poetry is, but there is still a conception in everybodys mind. that is because all poems from the world bear the same features as follows: first, generally speaking, poetry does not impart knowledge, does not tell the true event, and does not describe the real people. on the contrary, it reflects life in an indirect and winding way, but at the same time profoundly and intensely. second, poetry lays more emphasis on imagination compared with other literary forms. imagination can be recognized as the soul of poetry. third, poetry has its special forms. it is made up of several short lines and each line begins with a capital letter. fourth, poetry has rhythms and clear meters, which is similar to music. as a result, someone calls poetry “a kind of musical thought”. fifth, poetry language is very elegant and refined. rhetorical devices, such as metaphor, symbolism and personification are more frequently applied. sixth, words and sentences of poetry are different from general literary language. some poets use words which seldom appear in daily life and also make deviations on word order in sentences, which phenomenon is called “poetic license” (wang, 1987, p. 365-366). the above factors are the characteristics of all poems. however, differences still universally exist. for the third aspect, poems from different countries bear different forms. for instance, english poetry used the patterns of sonnet, heroic couplet and later free verse; chinese poetry patterns experienced more changes, from the book of songs pattern in xi zhou dynasty to chu ci pattern of the warring states period to the folk-song-styled-verse in han dynasty to the truncated and regulated verse of tang poetry to ci in song dynasty to q of yuan dynasty and finally to free verse. english and chinese poetry arrived at the same goal by different roads in the respect of poetic forms. for the fifth aspect, due to the traits of different languages, poems from different lands show us different feelings. take english and chinese for example, the former comes from indo-european language family and the latter from sino-tibetan family. consequently and naturally, they embody a number of differences. for instance, english is more accurate, logical and grammatical; while chinese is vaguer and refined, which is rich in meaning and four-word-idioms. hence, chinese poetry is good at vagueness beauty, such as li shangyins “春蚕到死丝方尽”. you can obtain at least 4 meanings from it, 1. 春蚕吐丝到死为止；2. 诗人作诗到死方休；3. 对情人的相思到死才罢；4. 做事要鞠躬尽瘁死而后已。(xu, 2006: 7) different meanings provide readers with the space for thinking and imaging. 2.3.2 analysis of the theories by xu and guhowever, xu yuanchongs “three beauties” theory (beauty in sound, form and meaning) focuses too much emphasis on poetry without realizing that poetry is also a part of literature and it also bears the features of all literary works, of which the emotion that the authors express through words and the styles of different writers are the most important. from 2.3.1 we can see even wang zuoliang neglected these two obvious characters of poetry. actually, of all the literary forms, poetry reflects the trait of emotion beauty mostly and perfectly. a novel or a drama impresses the reader by their special plots or mortifying endings; a report shows readers the most important information of an event in the most direct way; but for a poem, its the feeling it expresses that makes it resound through ages. in only a few sentences and even a few words, poems can let the readers produce the same feelings as the writers. we pray together with whitman for president lincoln by o captain! my captain; we share william blakes sad mood of losing his love by his loves secret; and we feel very ordinary and unimportant by emilys i am nobody. francis bacon (1625) said: “some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested”. poems only with beautiful and elegant words without an obvious and strong emotion are only empty shells. as for gu zhengkuns “five beauties” theory (beauty in form, sound, meaning, story and taste), he pointed out two more aspects-story and taste beauty. for story beauty, i mean the beauty produced in readers minds by the literary quotations, the plot and the structure of the poems. (gu, 2003: 33) compared with other literary forms, plot and structure are what poetry is short of, which does not deserve a profound research and discussion. the taste beauty of poetry means the integrated aesthetic appreciation produced in readers minds by the poems sound, version, story, meaning, etc. (gu, 2003: 36) since form, sound and meaning beauties have been included in his “five beauties” theory, we have no need to especially provide a beauty aspect for their comprehensive effect here. whats more, different poets styles in the way they think, they feel, and they write, are what we can never evade. generally, based on the discussion of poems literary characteristics (strong emotion, different poets respective styles, beautiful sound patterns, regular forms and plentiful meanings in limited words) and the analysis of the theories by xu yuanchong and gu zhengkun, we believe its time for us to put forward a new theory for poetry beauty here-five beauties of poetry (13): beauty in emotion, style, sound, form and meaning. hence, in the following parts, discussion will be made from these five aspects.3. features of english poem translationeugene a. nida, the leading authority in the field of translation, and famous american translation theorist, put forward the well known “translation equivalence” theory in the 1960s. ever since this theory came to china, it met great opposition and many scholars held different opinions by arguing that its impossible to get absolute equivalence between two different languages. to some extent, that is true. chinese and english do not come from the same language family, so its difficult to acquire equiv