摘 要

朗费罗是最早一批进入中国人视野的美国诗人之一，很多中国的英语诗歌爱好者通过他的抒情小诗《箭与歌》步入了英语诗歌的殿堂，该诗在中国被译成多个版本，本文通过对叶玉森、胡适、穆旦、杨德豫和罗长斌的译诗进行分析比较，发现在语体选择上叶诗和罗诗使用了工整的古体诗的形式，将新的诗歌理念和内容融入了中国古体诗的韵律和意境中，其余三位则采用了自由体诗形式，语言句法更加灵活，其中胡适的译诗体现的尤为明显，在形式和内容上都显示出了对原作的偏离；罗诗着重体现出了对诗歌思想主题的理解；杨德豫和穆旦对原诗的翻译出入最小，与原诗的结构和意义保持一致，最贴近原诗语境，不过也在一定程度上显示出缺乏对细节的变通处理和对诗歌词汇用意的深入理解。

关键词：朗费罗；《箭与歌》；中译本；意蕴；形式

Abstract

Longfellow is one of the first American poets who were introduced to Chinese people. His lyric poem “The Arrow and the Song” , ushering lots of Chinese people into the world of English poetry, has been translated into multiple versions, of which the translators include Ye Yusen, Hu shi, Mu Dan, Yang Deyu and Luo Changbin. By comparing the five different translations, this paper is expected to demonstrate that Ye Yusen’s and Luo Changbin’s version uses a neat form of classical poetry in style, which combines the new poetic concept and content with the rhythm and artistic conception of ancient Chinese poetry. While the other three translators adopts the form of free-style poetry with more flexible language and syntax, among which Hu shi's version, particularly obvious, shows the deviation from the original work in both form and content aspects; Luo's translated poem focuses on the understanding of the theme of poetry. Yang Deyu and Mu Dan makes the least discrepancy in the translation of the original poem, which is consistent with the structure and meaning of the original poem and closest to the context of the original. However, the lack of flexibility in details and a deep understanding of the poetry’s implicature is also found in the both versions.

Key Words: Longfellow; The Arrow and the Song; Chinese version; implication; form

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Literature Review 3

2.1 Longfellow and "The Arrow and the Song" 3

2.2 "The Arrow and the Song" in China 3

2.3 Relevant Research 4

3 Analysis of Implication of the Chinese translation of "The Arrow and the Song" 6

3.1 Ideological and thematic analysis 6

3.2 Lexical meaning 8

4 Analysis of Form of the Chinese translation of "The Arrow and the Song" 12

4.1 Poetry skills and translation styles 12

4.2 Sentence structure and mood 13

5 Conclusion 16

References 17

Appendix 18

Acknowledgements 20

Study on the Chinese translation of “The Arrow and the Song”

1 Introduction

In the second half of the 19th century, Chinese began to translate American literature. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, one of the greatest American romantic poets in the 19th century, is the first American poet to be introduced from the West to China, whose "A Psalm of Life" is the first English poem translated into Chinese. His poems were introduced into China in great numbers and they were translated by many famous translators or scholars, which have played a great role in promoting the creation of Chinese new style poems.

Longfellow was the first American poet who skillfully applied the European classical poetry form to express the new emotion and the new theme. His poems are fresh and sweet, simple and implicit, full of philosophical and thought-provoking implication. He is good at using symbols, metaphors and repetition, and integrating common wisdom into his poems. From “The Arrow and the Song”, it may be found that these characteristics are perfectly embodied.

To some extent, many people began to focus on researching the acceptance, spread and influence of Longfellow's works in China, including doing comparative literature studies and analysing the connotation of the foreign poetry, etc. Less people made detailed comparison of different translations which show different understanding and styles of translators. Therefore, in this paper Longfellow's classic poem "The Arrow and the Song" is chosen as a reference to achieve the following three purposes. One is to make an analysis on the translation styles of different translators and the translation theories and skills they used in translation; the second is to explore the translator's different ways of dealing with the same sentence or the same images in a poem, so as to discover the cultural consciousness reflected in it; the third is to summarize the common features of Chinese poetry translation.

At present, some researches on Longfellow's poems in China are lack of independent opinions and innovative consciousness, many Chinese scholars are moving forward along the research direction of western scholars. Therefore, it is hoped to study the Chinese versions of "The Arrow and the Song" which give readers a variety of enjoyment from the perspective of translation and cultural differences. In this way, this paper would suggest the cognition and understanding of Longfellow's poems from the perspective of localization, further expanding the horizon of Longfellow's research in China, and enriching the relevant research achievements.

As for the structure of this paper, the creation background of “The Arrow and the Song” would be pointed out firstly, and then followed by the introduction of how popular this poem is in China. Then the relevant analysis would be carried out from the aspects of implication and form. Finally, there are conclusions drawn in the last chapter.

2 Literature Review

2.1 Longfellow and "The Arrow and the Song"

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) was one of the greatest American romantic poets in the 19th century. He had ever taught courses in linguistics and literature, both of which laid a solid foundation for the writing of his poetic skills and the expression of his poetic thoughts and emotions, and he was one of the first poets who introduced European culture to the United States and led American literature to the world. His works have worldwide influence. The poetry language is simple and easy to be understood, often eulogizing the life of the common people, and using symbolic and repeated rhetoric to enhance the philosophy in his poetry, which is known as the poet of "art for the sake of life".

His poem "The Arrow and the Song" is a lyric poem, which was written on October 16, 1845 and included in his collection of poems Bruges Bell Tower and Others published in 1845. The poet was thinking of the poem with his back to the fire, preparing to go to church, and he felt that the inspiration for the poem came as fast as an arrow to himself, and that the process of its creation was very close to improvisation.^[1]

2.2 "The Arrow and the Song" in China

Longfellow came into the sight of Chinese people very early. His poem "The Arrow and the Song" attracted many English poetry lovers and led them into the hall of English poetry. The poem had an enlightening effect on Guo Moruo's poetry creation in the early stage. In My Process of Poetry Writing by Guo Moruo, he described his feelings when he first read the poem : “The poem makes me feel very fresh, and it seems that I have just met ‘Poetry’ for the first time. In such a simple antithetical repetition, I realized the true spirit of poetry”.^[2]

Since its introduction into China, this poem has been translated and introduced by many well-known Chinese scholars and poets. Among them, Ye Yusen (1880-1933)^[3] was the "earliest translator" of “The Arrow and the Song” in China. He translated it as 《矢与歌》 by applying the “Guo Feng style” in “the Book of Songs”. ^[4]In 1913, Huang Shouceng, a native of xiuning county, anhui province, translated the poem into 《白羽红衣曲》, which was included in the 《寄傲盒遗集》^[5]. On June 14, 1943, Hu Shi translated this poem, entitled 《一支箭，一只曲子》. After reading it, Liang Shiqiu sent the poem to the literary journal for publication. It is a good example of Hu Shi's ability in translating and composing new poems at a mature stage. “The Arrow and the Song” translated by Mu Dan was published in the second issue of translation in 1957 and is now included in the eighth edition of mu Dan's translation anthology published by people's literature publishing house. At present a number of domestic versions of the Longfellow anthology contain this poem, including the verions of Yang Deyu^[6], Tao Xingzhi and Wang. Luo Changbin, a researcher of contemporary literary translation, also translated this poem. Due to its unique translation style and research value, this paper will also analyze and study his translated poem. Different people have different understanding of poetry, so they use different forms, different processing methods and different concepts, which determine the different styles and their gains and losses in the translation. This paper chooses five different translated works and analyzes them of Ye Yusen, Luo Changbin, Hu Shi, Yang Deyu and Mu Dan respectively .

2.3 Relevant Research

As the representative work of Longfellow, “The Arrow and the Song” appeared in many scholars’ papers and books, such as 《朗费罗的诗歌在中国的译介》 written by Liu Shijun and 《朗费罗诗歌对中国新诗的影响研究》written by Yang Yunfeng, etc. Those articles simply introduced the propagation process of the poem in China or took it as an example to illustrate that western poetry promoted the generation of the Chinese “new poetry” consciousness. Some scholars discussed the poetry itself, such as Wang Xiangyun's 《lt;箭与歌gt;欣赏》, which discussed the theme of the poetry, and Liu Shijun's research on 《接受美学视野下的朗费罗诗歌研究——以lt;箭与歌gt;为个案》，which analyzed the overall characteristics of the poetry from the aspects of phonetics, semantics, rhetoric and imagery. As for the Chinese translations, Luo Changbin's 《朗费罗诗作的寓意解析和译文探以lt;箭与歌gt;的理解和翻译为例》, analyzed the Mr Yang Lin's poetry translation, pointed out that he did not translate symbolic significance of the "arrow" and "song", Sun Wenhui compared two kinds of translations of Yang Deyu and Wang Jinhua from the grammatical functions and phonological effects in《lt;箭与歌gt;汉译得失之浅析》, pointed out the advantages and disadvantages of both. Generally speaking, the domestic research on “The Arrow and the Song” is not comprehensive and detailed enough, especially in the aspect of Chinese translation, which lacks in-depth analysis and comparison of typical versions in different periods.