2024年3月14日发(作者：)

英语毕业论文

Beauty in sound, form and sense in Poetry Translation

—— Translation of Classical Chinese Poetry From Chinese to English

中国古典诗歌英译的音美、形美和意美

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to all those who helped me during the

writhing of this dissertation. A special acknowledgement should be shown to Mr. Zhang,

my supervisor, who benefited me a lot, not only in selecting the subject but also in the

writing process such as in the essay conception and essay structure. Moreover, I wish to

extend my thanks to all the classical Chinese poets and famous poetry translators since I

have quoted a lot of their works and words in supporting my argumentation, without these

quotations, my dissertation would absolutely lack in proof. Finally, I would like to give my

cordial thanks to our university’s library, from which I borrowed a lot of useful reference

materials.

Contents

1．Introduction … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … 1

2 . Beauty in sound … … … … … … … … … … … … … … 1

3. Beauty in form … … … … … … … … … … … … … … 5

4. Beauty in sense … … … … … … … … … … … … … … 8

4.1 False translation of a famous line … … … … … … … … 8

4.2 Translation of “puns”… … … … … … … … … … … 9

4.3 Translation of narrative poetry… … … … … … … … … 11

4.4 Contemporary on poetry translation that incurred controversial

comments … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …13

5. Conclusion … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …14

References … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … 16

Abstract

Abstract: Classical Chinese poetry, the gem of the Chinese culture and civilization

with a long history of three thousand years, is a unity of sound, form and sense. Yet the

translated versions usually cannot carry the equal effect and beauty of the original due to

the translators’ lack of skill, the differences between the Chinese language and the

English language and the inherent differences of cultures and civilizations between the

two nations. A poetry translator should not be satisfied with the mere conveying of the

original meaning to the target language, but must strive for the preservation and

reproduction of the original beauty in sound, form and sense to the utmost degree so as to

best bring out the artistic and musical beauty of the original. In this essay, account is given

to each of the three aspects, namely, beauty in sound, beauty in form and beauty in sense

separately. Beauty in sound mainly consists of beauty in rhythm and beauty in rhyme;

beauty in form refers to the regularity of length of poem lines and the syllables each line

contains; beauty in sense, the most important element of a poem, lies in the faithfully and

artistically conveying of the meaning of the original, which requires the translators’ grasp

of the classical Chinese literary history and thorough understanding of the context of the

original. On this point, the author further divides her argument into four parts. The first part

is about several ridiculous English versions of the famous immortal line “烟花三月下扬州

“ of Tang poet Libai ; The second part is on the translation of “puns”. To illustrate this point,

the author takes two Tang poems as examples, they are respectively Li Shangyin’s “…春

蚕至死丝方尽…” and Liu Bingxi’s “…道是无晴却有晴…”; the third part focuses on the

translation of narrative poetry and the author selects the mistaken translations of three

lines of Bai Juyi’s 《长恨歌》as examples and gives analyses on the mistakes made; The

fourth part is about poetry translations that irritate controversial comments. Last but not

least is the conclusion of this dissertation, the author unites the three aspects given before

into a unity and claims that a good poetry translation should be the preservation and

reproduction of the three aspects of the original. Yet due to the formidable barriers in

achieving this perfection, sometimes it’s inevitable to sacrifice one aspect for another less

important.

Key words: classical Chinese poetry beauty in sound beauty in form beauty in

sense

摘 要

中国古诗有着三千年历史，是中华民族与文化的精华，它是声、形、意三者的和谐统

一。然而，由于译者的翻译水平有限，中文与英文的差异以及两国之间的文化与文明的不同，