Chapter Four Results and Discussion·14

4.1 Translation of Imagery14

4.1.1 Translation of the Moon14

4.1.2 Translation of Flowers·18

4.1.3 Translation of Literary Quotations21 

4.2 Translation of Poems by Different Characters22 

4.2.1 Reflection of Personality and as Prophecy22

4.2.2 Ways to Achieve Functional Equivalence·25

Chapter Five Conclusion·27 

References30

Culture Factors in the Translation of Poems: Comparing the Two Versions of Hongloumeng Under the Guidance of Functional Equivalence

Chapter One Introduction

1.1 General Description of the Research

The most frequently asked question about translating poems is the feasibility and limitation. So, is it possible to translate ancient Chinese poems into English, a language from a completely different system? Men of letters vary in their opinions.  

Chinese translators represented by Lu Xun, Lin Yutang and Zhu Guangqian all believed that poems could not be translated, ceaseless efforts had been taken to translate Chinese poems into English, though.

With the passage of time, people tend to agree with the opposite notion that poems could be translated. American poet and translator Ben Belitt(1978) wrote in his thesis, the gap between original text and translation is a “‘middle kingdom’ of unknown and equivalence” and this gap could be traversed with the translator’s efforts.

As to the limitation of translation, attention has been predominantly drawn to the translation of the forms uniquely adopted in ancient Chinese poems. It is possible to translate poetry, given to the fact that the crux of the matter lies in achieving the balance between the meaning and format of a poem.

As Cong Zihang(2007) has concluded, the feasibility of translation is expanding along with the developing researches and furthering communications between countries. Hopefully, in the near future, we could witness another leap of the translation of Chinese classics.  

1.2 The Overall Structure of the Paper

The introduction to this thesis in chapter one is followed by the second chapter, which presents a retrospect of the research, including some representative translators at home and abroad, a brief comparison of the two versions and the writers, along with analysis on imagery and format, the two representative factors of ancient Chinese poems. The third chapter centers on the methodology of this thesis, i.e., Functional Equivalence, descriptive translation studies and comparison. The fourth chapter deals with the result and discussion of the thesis. Finally the fifth chapter draws an end to the thesis with a conclusion on comparing the two translation versions according to three aspects of ancient Chinese poems.

Chapter Two Literature Review

2.1 Introduction of Ancient Chinese Poetry Translation

   Ever since humans of different nationalities had developed their respective languages, translation has been necessitating its place in communication among different nationalities. As a “communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text”, literary translation poses even tougher challenges for translators are supposed to not only to convey the meanings but also the original writers’ implications to the targeted readers, with both languages and structures being taken consideration of. 

2.1.1 Outstanding Translators and Theories 

Western translation theories originated in Ancient Rome with the springing up of philological school, which, for the first time, highlighted the importance of keeping original language information and its aesthetics in literary translation since Cicero and Horace, who cautioned against translating "word for word" in 1st-century-BCE.