grand banquet
(School of Foreign Languages, Sun Yat-sen University, 200 1 Graduate School, Guangzhou 5 10275)
Abstract: quatrains are concise expressions of China's ancient poems. In the process of English translation of quatrains, due to the different textual features of Chinese and English poems, there will be poetic differences between the original poem and the translated poem to varying degrees. In this paper, the original text and the translated text are regarded as different texts, which are analyzed from three angles: text reference, text directionality and conceptual function. Through comparison, the textual characteristics of quatrains are obtained: ① Ellipsis is often used in quatrains, and readers' association is used to connect poems. ② The text orientation of quatrains is more vague than its English version. (3) quatrains express complex conceptual functions in concise and clear poems.
Keywords: anaphora, directionality, conceptual function
Abstract: Seven-character poetry is the most compact form of China's ancient poetry. In the process of translating these poems into English, the meaning of the original poems will be lost to some extent due to different text features. This paper focuses on the textual characteristics of seven-character poems and analyzes them from three aspects: ① reference; ② Text orientation; ③ Experiencing metafunction, and drawing the following conclusions: ① Seven-character poems are different from English texts, and ellipsis is usually used, so readers can understand the meaning of poems through imagination. ② The text orientation of Chinese text is different from that of English text. ③ Seven-character poems express complex meta-functions with concise texts.
Keywords: reference, text orientation, meta-function of experience
Poetry is an art with highly concentrated language and both form and spirit. China's quatrains are the most cohesive expression in the art of poetry. Quatrains have a large vocabulary, rich connotations and diverse artistic styles. Many articles have commented on the English translation of China's poems from the perspective of poetry translation. This paper regards China's ancient poems and their different versions as different texts from the perspective of functional grammar, so as to find out the similarities and differences between the original poems and the translated versions, make a quantitative analysis of them from the perspective of linguistics, and make a rough discussion on the textual characteristics of quatrains.
The following is an analysis of two English versions of a famous Tang poem.
"Looking at Lushan Waterfall" is the seven wonders of the prosperous Tang Dynasty and the pinnacle of China's quatrains. There are many versions of his translation. The author chooses Xu Yuanchong's translation and the bound edition of Wang Shouyi and John Noval for analysis.
"Looking at Lushan Waterfall" is a poem of 28 words, which expresses the indomitable spirit of Lushan incense burner peak, the diffuse sea of clouds, the dynamics and momentum of the waterfall in concise words. From the perspective of textual cohesion, the author thinks that in the original poem, Li Bai integrates the whole poem through intentional association. The words used in quatrains are simple in parts of speech and can be divided into four categories:
Nouns: Sun, incense burner, purple smoke, waterfall, Sichuan, Feiliu, San thousands of feet, Yinhe, Jiutian.
Verbs: shine, live, look, hang, drop, doubt, yes, drop.
Adverbs: want and know
Adjective: former
From the point of view of co-reference. Lexical cohesion refers to the relationship between repetition, synonym, metonymy, hyponymy, complementarity, whole and part, thus making the text coherent. (Guo-Wen Huang 1988) Lexical cohesion can be divided into two categories: recurrence and co-occurrence. The words used to refer to waterfalls in the original quatrains are: waterfalls-flying streams-the Milky Way, which is advancing from reality to nothingness step by step. From the artistic conception of poetry, "waterfall" is a realistic description, "flying stream" is a dynamic description of waterfall, and "flying" highlights the speed of waterfall falling. "The Milky Way" is a fictional writing, and "Suspected that the Milky Way has fallen for nine days" means that the actual waterfall is the Milky Way, which is magnificent and intertwined with the stars. Through the promotion of similar words, the shape of the waterfall is vividly described.
Verbs describing waterfalls can also form a contrastive lexical chain: hanging-falling-falling. Of these three words, "row" is static, while "down" and "Luo" are dynamic. These three words are all on the same lexical plane. Although there are no obvious words to express the cohesion of the text in the quatrains, these two words play an internal connecting role, which makes readers have an internal and clear logical relationship and can help readers better understand the meaning of the poem. The two versions of this poem are as follows:
Translation 1:
Lushan Waterfall
Sunlit incense burner peak spits out a circle of clouds,
Like an inverted stream, the waterfall is very loud.
Its torrent rushed down from 3,000 feet.
Like a silver river falling from a silver river (Xu Yuanchong)
Translation 2:
Look at Lushan Waterfall
Purple smoke rises from the top of the mountain.
I saw the distant valley stretching before me.
The whole waterfall hangs there.
The rapids fell from 1000 feet.
Go straight down to the bottom
I think it must be the Milky Way.
From heaven to earth (Wang Shouyi, John Noval)
In the noun chain describing waterfalls, the translated name 1 uses the pronoun it to represent waterfalls, and uses its local word torrent to reproduce words. In China's poems, "Waterfall", "Flying Stream" and "Galaxy" are all on the same lexical level. In the Wang Lushan Waterfall, they have the same semantic connotation, that is, swiftness and magnificence. Xu's translation adopts two cohesive devices: ① the use of cohesive devices; ② "torrent" is translated into torrent. Although it is not on a semantic level with waterfalls and cataracts, torrent is the vernacular of waterfalls and cataracts. The use of local words makes the whole poem coherent, giving people a concrete and realistic feeling. May the poem highlight the height and danger of Lushan Mountain through "purple smoke", "distant view" and "falling for nine days". The lexical cohesion in translated poetry is censerpeak-high-azure sky, which changes from imaginary writing to real writing. The last sentence in the quatrain is "doubt is", which expresses the author's praise for the grand scene of the waterfall, but it seems to have abandoned its charm, leaving only the superficial "image" without the inner "sigh".
However, from the perspective of textual cohesion, Xu's translation is not much different from the original poem. The original poems are related by the deep semantics of words, while the translated poems are basically consistent with the original in information except for increasing the length of the language chain. By enumerating the lexical chains describing waterfalls, we can see that in English, the correspondence between poems is mostly done by words.
Due to the differences in communicative function, scope of use and style, the organizational structure of the text is also diverse, and the structure of the text can be based on words such as time or space. (Guo-Wen Huang 1988) In the co-translated version by Wang Shouyi and John Noval, translators use a large number of prepositional phrases to express the transformation relationship between time and space.
From the top of the mountain-under the sun-to the bottom of the valley-to the ground-to the sky, the meanings of these prepositional phrases are hidden in the Chinese words "Sheng", "Xing" and "Luo". This kind of translation fully embodies the cohesive features of English texts. In this kind of translation, the hidden narrator jumps out in the form of the first person to communicate directly with the reader. Ellipsis is a common cohesive device in Chinese. Ellipsis refers to the omission of a component in a text. It is a grammatical means to avoid repetition, highlight new information and make the text compact up and down. In the quatrain of Looking at Lushan Waterfall, the author omits the first person "I" and exclaims directly: "It is suspected that the Milky Way has set for nine days". "I" has little to do with the context, so the "I" at the beginning of the sentence is omitted, but it will not cause readers misunderstanding. I didn't appear in Xu's translation, but I was indispensable in Wang He and John's translation, otherwise the sentence would be incomplete. In this translation, I is an indispensable cohesive device. Moreover, the sentence length of the translated version has changed, and the redundancy is much greater than that of the original, because it annotates all the empty metaphors in the original poem in an explanatory way.
Poetry is the highest form of thinking expression, and its language level is the highest in literature. Generally speaking, in literary works, the directionality of novels is clearer than that of poems, but this does not mean that poems have no directionality, because as long as they are texts, they all have certain directionality. Poetry is no exception. Poetry is a means for poets to express their feelings and convey information to readers, and it is also directional. The directionality of the text is mainly manifested in the following aspects: ① time)② place)③ event)④ Participant relationship. The basic purpose of directionality is to convey the basic information of the text to readers. The directionality of the words in the original poem is as follows: the sun is at noon; Location (incense burner → Lushan Mountain); Activities (overlooking the waterfall); Participants in English poetry (omitting I) are more directional;
Time: sunshine (no time)
Venue: Sunlight Condemnation
Teacher: Lushan Waterfall
Participants: (ellipsis)
Wang and John: Time: No time (in the sun).
Location: (peak)
Teacher: (watching Lushan fall)
Participants: (1)
Xu's translation was translated by Xu Yuanchong. Due to the same cultural background and profound knowledge of ancient poetry, Xu's translation maintains the ambiguity of Chinese quatrains. Wang and John's translations are more directional than Xu's poems and far stronger than China's original poems. Many English poems are characterized by unclear direction, such as Williams' Red Handcart and Ezrapound's Subway. However, the English versions of China's poems are far more directional than these original English poems. The language of poetry has a strong literary cohesion, and readers need to rely on association to guess its direction. In the process of translating Chinese poetry into English, the directionality becomes clear, while poetry gradually weakens with the enhancement of directionality. Due to the differences in the translator's ability to refer to things, the strength of imagination and the level of learning and education, the consistency between the translated poem and the original poem is also great or small.
Finally, from the conceptual function of functional grammar, the original poem and its translation are analyzed:
Wang and John's co-translation;
Purple smoke rises from the top of the mountain (material process)
The peak looks like a burning furnace in the sun (related process)
[14] In the distance, I see the valley stretching in front of me (behavioral relations and material processes).
The whole waterfall hangs there (material process)
5. The torrent descended to 1000 feet there (material process)
Go straight down to the bottom (no process)
I think it must be the Milky Way (psychological process and relationship process)
Falling from the sky (material process)
Xu translation:
1. Xianglu Fengtu wreath (material processing)
Like an inverted stream, the waterfall makes a loud sound (material process)
13. Its torrent rushed down from a height of 3,000 feet (material process).
4. Like a silver river falling from the blue sky (material)
Halliday's conceptual function refers to the expression of people's experiences in the real world (including the inner world). In other words, it reflects what happens in the objective world and the subjective world, the people and things involved, and the time, place and other factors related to it. (Hu Zhuanglin, Zhu Yongsheng 1989)
There are eight processes in the original poem, of which five are material processes (lighting, birth, hanging and falling), relational process 1 (yes), sensory process 1 (doubt) and behavioral process 1 (see). There are only four material processes in Xu's translation, while there are nine co-translations, including five material processes, two relational processes, 65,438+0 sensory processes and 65,438+0 behavioral processes. As can be seen from the number of material processes, the original poem "Looking at Lushan Waterfall" has 28 words, focusing on the majestic beauty of the peaks and waterfalls in Lushan, trying to describe the dynamic beauty of the waterfalls, and at the same time expressing the author's admiration incisively and vividly through two sensory processes, so that people have the real feeling of being in Lushan. Xu's translation maintains the characteristics of the quatrain of the original poem in length, but due to the characteristics of English itself, it cannot express the rich connotation of the original poem to the same extent. The four material processes only describe the scenery objectively. Because there is no sensory process, there is no charm of being there. On the other hand, Wang and John's co-translation largely retains the various processes of the original text, which is roughly the same as the original in quantity and proportion.
The author analyzes Wang Lushan Waterfall from three aspects: text reference, directionality and conceptual function, and thinks that the English version is cumbersome in text length, but it clarifies the directionality of the text, turns the virtual into the real, and tries to complete the reference relationship in the text and reproduce the artistic conception of the quatrains. However, due to the inherent characteristics of Chinese and English, poetry is lost in the English translation of quatrains to varying degrees. By comparison, the textual feature of quatrains is: 1. The text direction of quatrains is very clear. 4. quatrains express complex conceptual functions in simple and clear language. Understanding the characteristics of quatrains is helpful for us to combine the text characteristics of Chinese poems in translation, express the poetry of the original poem more accurately and reproduce the artistic conception of the original poem.
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