Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Background of the Present Study
In recent decades, Chinese culture has gained great influences from foreigncultures, especially from the English culture. Therefore, Chinese literature cannotavoid the influence of English culture either. In Chinese literature, poetry is the mostcondensed art compared with any other literary works. Thus poems translation hasalways caught great attention of translators. Most of translators, however, put theiremphasis only on the strategies they use from the angle of different features betweenEnglish and Chinese poems. Instead, the study of English poems translation from thepoint of rhythm alone has never been mentioned by researchers before.Tracing back to the history of English poems translation in Chinese literarytranslation, there are so many translators devoting their efforts to this area. They aredifferent contributors with different identities. Some of them are only researchersaiming at reproducing the features of English poems in the target language. And someof them are poets intended to transfer the graceful beauty of English poems for thetarget readers. Based on this difference of translator’s identity, we should step furtherinto the study of English poems translation from the angle of rhythm so as to enrichChinese poems production and learn the aesthetic values and appreciation attitudesfrom the Western culture.
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1.2 Significance of the Study
The translator is of exceeding importance in determining the aesthetic qualitiesof a translated text. The more a translator can perceive the aesthetic features of theoriginal text, the better he may translate. Due to the important role of a translator, hisperspectives, competence and creativity also need to be taken into great consideration.The translator’s aesthetic perspectives and competence to the original text involveactively in his understanding of the translated text. In the meantime, as the mostclassic and graceful literary form, poetry probably has earned great influences fromreaders. Hence, readers also need to be taken into consideration in the course ofpoems translation.Based on the above mentioned points, the study on the transference of rhythmbeauty in the translation of English poems from the angle of translator as the aestheticsubject is to transfer the aesthetic beauty of English poems into the Chinese poetryculture, and at the same time to broaden the sphere of Chinese poems production.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 Introductions of Rhythm
The poem’s most obvious feature is strongly marked rhythm. According toBrooks:Rhythm is, we know, the repetition in time of a perceptible pattern. The patternmay be visual, as in the flashing of a light or the advance and retreat of weaveson the beach, or it may be a pattern of repetition not in time but in space — wesometimes even speak of the rhythmic elements in a scene or a painting. Inpoetry, however, we are characteristically concerned with aural (heard) rhythm,that of sound. (Cleanth Brooks, 2004, pp. 1－2)Rhythm is the soul of a poem in that it can demonstrate the inner emotion and the outer pattern with flexible rhymes. Generally speaking, rhythm is somewhat likecadence, which always brings us vocal effects and emotional fluctuation. ThoughEnglish poems and Chinese poems have some differences in rhyme, the presentationsof rhythm are exactly the same. It is worth remembering that English is a fairly heavily stressed language. Thenative speaker will hurry on to the stresses in a sentence, where his voice seems tolinger for a space, before hurrying on again quickly over the lightly stressed syllabusto the next stress. In English, rhythm is the alternation of stressed words or syllableswith unstressed or lightly stressed words or syllables. When a poet writes a poem, heoften tries to organize the rhythm into some sorts of regular patterns. The commonestway of doing this is to try to get the same number of stresses in each line of the poem.Usually when talking about rhythm in poetry we will call the stresses beats. Thus, thepoet may decide that in each line he will have four beats or five beats or even sixbeats, and so he will write his poem with the number of beats he decided on recurringin each line.
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2.2 Beauty of Rhythm
Rhythm is the soul element of a poem, which gives readers great beautifulsound effects on their ears and hearts. The beauty of rhythm shows that the sound of apoem is graceful and exquisite enough to move and touch readers’ inner sensibility.And the beauty of rhythm in a poem can be presented in various ways, such as theaddition of punctuation marks to slow down the rhythm, the use of crossed lines tospeed up the rhythm, the reappearance of the same rhythm to show the beauty ofrepetition, and the application of alliteration to present the sound effects of a poem.Various ways can be used to show the beauty of rhythm in a poem. Different poetswill interpret their own rhythm pattern in different methods. There is no way to saythat one poem is good in rhythm and the other is bad. Each poem will hold its ownbeauty of rhythm.The following poem written by Robert Louis Stevenson can set a good exampleof the beautiful rhythm of a poem. “∨” is used to stand for an unstressed syllable,while “－” is to represent a stressed syllable. The above poem is a short poem with four feet in a line and with the mixture ofiambus and anapaest. In the third line of each stanza, the iambus is made up of singlesyllables, which speed up the rhythm of the poem, where the other lines are relativelyslow. The alternation of the quick and the slow rhythm makes the poem be a beautifulsong with rises and falls.
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Chapter 3 The Transference of Beauty on Rhythm ..........32
3.1 Translators of Two Different Identities.......32
3.2 Strategies Applied in the Translation of Beauty .....33
3.3 Enlightenment and Sublimation of the Study ....55
3.3.1 Analyses and Critics on Reasons for Different............56
3.3.2 Values of Poet and Researcher Translator’s Translations .........56
3.3.3 Requirements for Translators in the Translation ……….5
Chapter 4 Conclusion .........59
4.1 Major Findings.........59
4.2 Possible Contributions ...........60
4.3 Limitations and Suggestions .........61
Chapter 3 The Transference of Beauty on Rhythm in the Translation of English Poems
3.1 Translators of Two Different Identities
Translator is the subject of aesthetics, and holds unique opinions on differentworks. Different translators give their own annotations to the same poem, so they alsopresent different translated versions. In this thesis, the author divides translators intotwo groups, poet translator and researcher translator. The poet translator is that atranslator on the one hand is a translator, and on the other hand is a poet, who willconcern about whether the translated version will keep the soul characteristics of theoriginal when he translates a poem. The researcher translator is a translator whomainly takes the superficial features into consideration when he translates a poem andaims to transfer the main formal features of the original into the world of the targetlanguage to widen the production of poems writing. The poet translator in this thesis is just a representative of those translators whotry their best to keep the beauty of the original and make some creative changessometimes to reproduce the aesthetic features of the original poem. This kind oftranslator takes great consideration on aesthetic values, art appreciation andenjoyment of sensual feelings. However, the researcher translator puts more emphasison the clear accordance with the original in meter and stanza, even though sometimesthis way of keeping the intrinsic features will destroy the inner beauty of the poem.The researcher translator mainly aims to produce works for researchers to study thecharacteristics of the original text and enrich the production and creation of Chinesepoems.
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Conclusion
As an important element of a poem, rhythm has drawn great attention in thetranslation circles. Compared with other aspects of English poems, there might beabundant special features during the process of transferring rhythm beauty for readers.After analyses and explanations, the thesis casts the light at three points on the majorfindings.The first major finding is that the thesis focuses on the combination of thetranslator as the aesthetic subject and the rhythm transference to explore thereproduction of the rhythm beauty in the translation of English poems. AlthoughEnglish and Chinese have great differences in aesthetic articulation, human emotionsabout rhythm are interlinked, and so is the rhythm rooted in poems. Based on theabove two commons, translators with different identities produce many gracefultranslations from various aspects. It seems that these translated versions by differenttranslators are not the same, but in fact, they all reveal and demonstrate the innerqualities of the aesthetic subject. Translator’s personalities and talents cannot bemeasured and neglected. It is the translator as the aesthetic subject who makes theaesthetic reproduction of rhythm beauty be multivariable.
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