论文总字数：48532字

摘 要

诗歌翻译是一种特殊的文学艺术，是一种文学创作。在诗歌翻译的过程中，不同文化背景下，不同翻译流派的不同译者采用的翻译手法也不同。本研究以接受理论为视角，从目标读者的接受角度出发，探索中国古诗词的英译研究。现象学和阐释学是接受美学理论的重要源泉。接受美学是以读者为中心研究文本接受效果的理论体系。接受美学为翻译研究带来了一场思想革命，使文学翻译的接受者占据主导地位，并为翻译提供了一个全新的理论视角和研究方法。在接受美学指导下，译者应缩小本土读者与目标读者之间“期待视角”的差异，同时考虑到目标读者的接受度以消除文化隔离。李煜诗词在中国古典诗歌中占有重要地位，并对后世影响极大。因此本文以李煜诗词为例进行研究。

关键词：诗歌翻译；接受美学；李煜诗歌

Contents

1. Introduction………………………………………………………………1
2. Literature Review…………………………………………………………2

2.1 An Overview on Translation of Chinese Classical Poetry………...………...2

2.2 A Brief Review on Reception Aesthetics ........................………………....4

2.3 The Status of Li Yu’s Poetry.......………………………………………...10

1. Analyses on Different Translations of Li Yu’s Poetry in Light of Reception Aesthetics..........................................................................11

3.1 An Analysis on Different Translations of Lang Tao Sha in Light of Reception Aesthetics ..................................……………………………….11

3.2 An Analysis on Different Translations of Wang Jiang Nan in Light of Reception Aesthetics…..........................................................……........14

3.3 An Analysis on Different Translations of Yu Mei Ren in Light of Reception Aesthetics........................................................…………………………………16

1. Conclusion...................................................................................19

Works Cited…………………………………………………………………...21

1. Introduction

Poetry is a unique form of literature with a certain rhythm and rhyme, and it is more refined and exquisite than any other literary genres. With the use of conventions and forms, poetry could evoke emotional responses. Poetry is beautiful, just as Edgar Alan Poe points out,“Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty.” Poetry is a reflection of poets’ emotions. Classical Chinese poetry, as a crystallization of human wisdom and experience, is of great importance in Chinese history, having great influence in the whole world. All theses works are not only a cultural bond which is linked with Chinese people’s affections and thoughts, but also the cultural bridge of China and the world. Therefore, the translation of Chinese classical poems is of great importance that it can bridge the cultural disparities and transmit Chinese literary heritages.

Li Yu’s poetry is of great importance in the history of classical Chinese poetry. He inherits the tradition of flowery school in Tang dynasty and reflects artistic conceptions through concrete and sensory personalized images. This is in an important step to forward the verse creation and expands the expression field of poetry. Therefore, this thesis chooses Li Yu’s poetry as an example.

However, poetry translation is different from the translation of other genres because of its artistry and subtlety. What’s more, diverse geographical conditions and cultural customs make a gigantic difference between Chinese and English. Therefore, the work of translating Chinese poetry into English has never be facile.

The primary goal of translating classical Chinese poetry into English is to dismiss language barriers in English readers’ reading process when they are engage in Chinese works. Thus, what translators need to do firstly is to find out the target readers of classical Chinese poetry. Obviously, people in English speaking countries are the target readers. More and more translators and scholars devote themselves to translating classical Chinese poetry and have made great achievements, but many people forget the main goal of translation, ignoring the reception of readers. However, Reception Aesthetics has conquered this point.

The application of Reception Aesthetics to the translation of classical Chinese poetry provides a new perspective for the translation. Attaching great importance to the target readers, this thesis will focus on the reception of target readers.

2. Literature Review

In this part, relevant literature is presented. To begin with, the basic features of poetry translation are illustrated. Classical Chinese poetry could be divided into different kinds according to different basis of classification. Li Yu’s poetry plays an important role in classical Chinese poetry. At the same time, Reception Aesthetics is of great importance in this part.

2.1 An Overview on Translation of Chinese Classical Poetry

Poetry, a special form of literature always bearing beauty in sound, form and sense. The translation of poetry has become a vital part in translation studies.

To some degree, poetry translation is equal to a kind of literary creation by translators. Translators need to devotes particular care to faithfulness, expressiveness, and elegance in the process of translation, which is proposed by Yan Fu, a famous Chinese translator. This principle is also well applied in poetry translation.

However, the translatability of poetry has been a controversial issue in translation field. Some people hold the view that poetry is translatable while others do not. Liu Zhongde, among many other scholars, believes that it is possible, though quite difficult to translate poetry successfully. He gives two reasons for his argument. To begin with, among man, there are a lot of thing in common. That is to say, all human beings share the same mind to some extent given by nature. Poetry is a reflection of human being’s mind and thus it is translatable. Poetry written by famous poets, are always translated into several languages around the world, and many of them are of extra fine quality.

Other scholars hold the opposite view. Several reasons give birth to their standpoint. First of all, the artistic conception is a kind of abstract art form which is difficult to translate, expressing the poetry’s soul and essence. Then it comes to the form of poetry. To be exact, form of poetry including its internal rhythm and external forms. Because of the diverse language of source texts and target texts, it is uneasy to complete this task. Last but not the least, the unique meaning of particular words or phrases in poetry make translation activities harder because of the cultural barriers between source language and target language(Zhuo Zhenying,2003:5).

The quality of a piece of poetry translation is examined in retaining original meaning and artistic conception and the degree of translation’s form, rhythm and rhyme, just as Liu Zhongde’s idea(Liu Zhongde,1991:129). However, it is impossible and unnecessary to translate the source texts word for word because of the differences between Chinese and English local customs and practices and language characteristics. A good piece of poetry translation is a perfect combination of three aesthetic features embraced in the original work.

Classical Chinese poetry, playing an irreplaceable role in Chinese cultural history, is a treasure of China splendid cultural heritage humanistic education and language learning. In the vast body of literature, poetry is a bright pearl of Chinese people’s blood essence inheritance.

Classical Chinese poetry could be divided into several kinds according to different basis classification. First of all, based on sound and rhythm, classical Chinese poetry could be divided into four types:a form of pre-Tang poetry, usually having five or seven characters to each line, without strict tonal patterns or rhyme schemes;“modern style” poetry, referring to innovations in classical poetry during the Tang dynasty, marked by strict tonal patterns or rhyme schemes;Ci and Qu are another two kinds. Secondly, according to the contents of poetry, it can be divided into nostalgic poetry, object-chanting poetry, pastoral poetry, poetry of war, poetry of traveling, poetry of boudoir repinings and farewell poetry. Thirdly, in accordance with poetry’s ways of expressions, classical Chinese poetry is split into narrative poetry with complete plots and characters and lyrics with full release of poets’ emotions. Sometimes, they are inter woven. Fourthly, in line with rhyme and structure, classical Chinese poetry falls into three genres as follows, metrical poetry with strict requirements on form, rhythm, number of character and lines, sentence patterns, etc. Free verse with free form and popular language, and prose poetry, a mixture of characteristics of prose and poetry.

Different schools of poetry should translated in different ways with various translation principles.

Most translators pay much attention to text adaptability in literary translation, in order to reproduce the language characteristics of original texts despite the different language customs and cultural distinctions between Chinese and English. However, the role of readers is still secondary in their translation activities. Nowadays, the target readers in translation process plays an significant role. This is one of the core points of Reception Aesthetics which will be well introduce in next part.

2.2 A Brief Review on Reception Aesthetics

This part probes into the theoretical framework of this thesis. Phenomenology and hermeneutics are the important sources of Reception Aesthetics. Meanwhile, the sinicization of Reception Aesthetics makes more and more Chinese people accept and study this theory. The application of Reception Aesthetics is of great importance in translation, especially in translation of classical Chinese poetry.

2.2.1 Theoretical Background and General Development Situation of Reception Aesthetics

Reception Theory is a contemporary literary theory, attaching great importance in readers’ reception and interpretation. It derived its origin from hermeneutics in the late 1960s in German, and swept world quickly. It is one of the outstanding representatives of the reader response criticism. Reader response mainly includes phenomenological consciousness criticism, hermeneutic criticism and Self psychology school of depth psychology, structuralism, deconstructivism and reception theory. Reception is defined “as a process creating meaning which realizes the instructions given in the linguistic appearance in the text” (Fokkema,Douwe Wessel,1986:137).

Before the emerge of reception theory, the great changes in political, cultural even economic parts in west countries, especially in German, are the direct sources of this theory(Zhu Liyuan 2004).

The 20th century is worth being called “the century of criticism”. Western criticism in this hundred years has experienced three major theoretical shift, including the writer-centered theory which takes the writer’s writing idea as the fundamental basis of understanding the meaning of the work, the text-centered theory which takes the text’s language construction as the basis and the reader-centered theory which takes readers’ reading, creative understanding as the direct source of the generation of the literature meaning.

In numerous literary theories, reception aesthetics with its huge breakthrough towards previous literary theory, the traditional way of focusing on the study of the author and works for the first time, taking readers as the center of literary movement, has become one of today’s biggest influential genre.

The representatives of Reception Aesthetics is the five professors in the University of Konstanz in Germany, Jauss and Iser are the founders of this thought. Jauss is mainly influenced by Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutics, and advocates the historicity of literary reception, pays attention to rebuild the methodology of literary studies on the unification of history and aesthetics. Jauss’s works includes Toward Aesthetic of Reception and Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics. Compared with other aesthetic works in this period, Jauss’s theory has two distinctions. The one is reader-centered, another is to begin in analyzing horizon of expectations. Iser’s theoretical basis is from Roman Ingarden’s phenomenological literary theory. He is devoted to make an general phenomenological analysis on the reading reaction of internal text structure.He considered Jauss’s theory as a “reception study”, and his own theory as the “response study”.The former one emphasizes “the method of history-sociology”, and the latter one emphasizes “the method of text analysis”. He attaches more importance to reading and interpretation, and at the same time, he emphasizes the interaction between readers and the text in the process of reading. From his point of view, studying literature works should pay attention to both the text itself and reader’s reaction towards the text. In other words, the combination of the text and the reader can produce literary works. To elaborate his theory, Iser put up two concepts, “the implied reader” and “the calling structure”.

Generally speaking, Reception Aesthetics is different from other aesthetic theories because of its reader-centered central theme.

2.2.2 The Development of Reception Aesthetics in China

Reception Aesthetics was born in Germany in the 1960s of the twentieth century and caused a huge storm in western aesthetic circles, including academic circles in The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. However, this theory started to spread in China in the 1980s because of the geographical distance and cultural isolation.

In 1983, Mr. Feng Hanjing translated La Reception Literaire which was written by Italy scholars Franco Meregalli into Chinese. This is considered to be the earliest spread of Reception Aesthetics in China. In the same year, with the publication of Poetry has no absolute interpretation written by Mr. Zhang Longxi and Notes on Reception Aesthetics written by Mr.Zhang Li, Reception Aesthetics entered domestic academic circles. Meanwhile, the process of Sinicization of Reception Aesthetics started.

Domestic researches on Reception Aesthetics itself started when it was introduce into China. People who translated and wrote an introduction to this theory such as Zhang Longxi, Zhang Li and Zhang Guofeng has made a fusion of their own horizons and the introduction. Meanwhile, they chose some statements from ancient Chinese literary theories to interpret the views of Reception Theory.

Zhu Liyuan and Jin Yuanpu are the the two scholars who have the most influence in the structure of Reception Aesthetics. They participated in the process of translating literary works of Reception Aesthetics very early and proposed the theoretical construction of Sinicization of Reception Aesthetics very early. Mr. Zhu Liyuan builds the architecture of Reception Aesthetics from the perspective of holistic and systematic view of cognition(Dou Keyang 2014:102). Mr. Jin Yuanpu “explains and studies Reception and Responses Literary Theory from the perspective of linguistic turn of modern Hermeneutics”. He traced to the source of Reception and Responses Literary Theory, and found that the theoretical core of Reception Aesthetics is the dialogue communication system of “subject-subject”.In addition,“making a microscopic study of reading process carefully”, paying more attention to “hermeneutic circle” and the “blank” and “indeterminacy” of meanings are all within his vision(Jin Yuanpu 1998).

Under numerous famous scholars efforts, theoretical studies of Reception Aesthetics has become more and more splendid, more monographs on Reception Aesthetics has been published. With the translation and introduction of various documents, the horizon of educational circles has become broader and compatriots’ cognition towards Reception Aesthetics has become more intensive and concrete.

2.2.3 Key Concepts of Reception Theory

“horizon of expectations”,“indeterminacy and concretization”, and “the role of reader” are the core key concepts of Reception Aesthetics. The two kinds of points are of great significance in poetry translation around the world. Detailed explanations of these concepts are as follows.

The first one is “horizon of expectations”. The focus of translation studies has experienced the transition from the writer to the text, and then from the text to the reader. According to reception aesthetics, literature works without readers are just the texts on the shelf. The works make sense only when they enter reader’s horizon and the gap in them are filled by the reader.

Horizon of expectations is the backbone of Jauss’s reception theory. According to Jauss,“a literary work, even though it appears to be new, does not present itself as something completely new in an informational vacuum, but predisposes its audience to a very specific kind of reception by announcements, overt and covert signals, familiar characteristics, or implicit illusions(H.R.Jauss,1983:23).” Generally, horizon of expectations is divided into two aspects:a narrow literary horizon of expectations which is based on former aesthetic experience, and a more broad living horizon of expectations which is based on former experience of life. The combination of the two aspects produces a concrete reading expectation. That is to say, horizon of expectations is the appreciation requirements and levels of reader to literary works in literary receptive action, especially in reading. In concrete process of reading, it often manifests as a potential aesthetic expectation. It includes several meanings. Firstly, to a brand new work, the reader should have a kind of knowledge frame or a understanding structure before he or she start his or her literature experience. That is, the “pre-understanding” structure. Without it, no one could receive new things. Secondly, the so-called new works, are always in a chain of history of the texts themselves and their receivers, conveying their characters to readers and make them produce expectations. Thirdly, horizon of expectations is not fixed, and it is in constant changes. Receivers need to change their “horizon” continually through the understanding of sequential generations.

In order to make it easier for readers to understand, Jauss divides horizon of expectations into personal horizon of expectations and public horizon of expectations. Meanwhile, he points out that the main task of aesthetic research is to analyze public horizon of expectations. Public horizon of expectations refers to a common horizon of expectations which occupied a dominant position in a long period. It influences the formation of personal horizon of expectations privately and determines the depth and breadth of literature reception in a certain history period.

The second one is indeterminacy and concretization. According to reception aesthetics, the reception of literary texts is a kind of interpretive related activity. The meaning of literary works is discovered by readers from the works themselves. Without reading, there is a great deal of “blank” or “indeterminacies” in texts, only in reader’s reading, an activity of “concretization”, the “blank” could be filled. The meaning of works is not inherent, but formed in readers’ reading processes.

Iser attaches much importance to “blank”. He reckons blank as basic condition of communication. There is on need to communicate without blank. Indeterminacy is a distinctive feature of literature, and the whole potential effectiveness of a text won’t be found by readers within one or a few times. Therefore, the meaning of literary works won’t meet the end until readers finish their reading. In most narrations, clues are always cut suddenly, the the story will continue from another angle or in an unexpected direction. The facts mentioned above give rise to the blank of meaning which needs to completed by readers. Readers’ understanding and interpretation could fill the gap of blank or indeterminacy, and then the two or more parts will be linked together to produce “a horizon of wandering viewpoint”(W.Iser,1978:120).

In brief, readers’ experience of sensation and perception will fill the blank to make the indeterminacy of the text could be firmed and reach the realization of the literary works.

To a certain extent, readers could communicate with the writer and the text itself through indeterminacy and concretization. At the same time, with the existence of blank and indeterminacy, readers have more space and chances to think about the texts.

Last but not the least, the role and status of readers are of great importance. On account of attaching readers’ concretization to the formative elements of literary works, Reception Aesthetics inevitably cannot just admit readers’ passive reception towards literary works just like other aesthetic theories, but to admit readers’ active creation towards literary works.

According to Reception Theory, the process of readers’ acceptance of texts is the process of recreation of the texts. Literary works does not created only by the writers themselves but also by the readers. Readers are connoisseurs, critics and writers at the same time in that appreciation and criticism are the manufacture and realization of literary works. According to Jauss,“the history of literature is the history of consumption, that is, the history of consumption subject(Jauss,1983).” The so-called “consumption subject” here is the reader, that is to say, the history of literature will turn into the history of readers.Thus it can be seen that the reader plays an important role in reception aesthetics.

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