1. The language is concise and implicit. The pursuit of poetry is to express the richest meaning with the least words. No matter Chinese or foreign poems, they all pay attention to the repeated scrutiny of words, so as to achieve the point of abandoning the root and chasing the end. Poetry is the simplest language, so it should be implicit. Expressing endless affection with limited words is the essence of poetry. From this perspective, no poem can be fully understood, and there must be some seemingly incomprehensible parts, that is, hazy beauty and implicit beauty. Because it is implicit and hazy, its meaning is particularly rich, which provides readers with various possibilities of appreciation. The ancients said: Poetry is beyond words, and it is also from this perspective.
2. The imagery beauty of painting. Poetry uses images to express meaning. The ancient Greek poet Simon Nedis said: "Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is vivid painting." Zhang Shunmin, an ancient man, put forward in "Painting Collection": "Poetry is an invisible painting, and painting is a tangible poem", all of which emphasized the distinctive features of poetry. The scenery description and scene blending in poetry constitute the beauty of painting. The beauty of this painting depends on the creation of images, and poetry presents readers with concrete images that can be seen intuitively, thus forming a visual image in readers' minds and satisfying people's visual feelings. At the same time, image can cause association, and association has great power to induce emotion. Generally speaking, the most appreciated poems are those whose images most people can see in their minds.
3. Rich emotional beauty. Emotional beauty is an important feature of poetry. Poetry without emotional beauty cannot be called poetry, nor can it be called good poetry. The greatest poetry must be full of strong emotions. In a specific living environment, the poet casts a clanking language with the burning passion in his heart, showing specific thoughts and feelings. Poetry can express one's mind directly and sing sonorous and soft; The emotion of poetry can be exciting or boring; It can be obvious or implicit. No matter what emotion, as long as it is sincere and pure, it can constitute the emotional beauty of poetry, arouse readers' emotional harmony and enjoy this beauty.
4. Wonderful music. Beautiful rhythm and rhyme are important structural factors of poetic beauty. It can be subdivided into two aspects. The first is the rhythm of sound, including temperament (flat and light, long and short sentences) and rhythm (rhyme and rhyme). ); The second is semantic rhythm, which refers to word segmentation, sentence breaking, sudden opening and word continuity. All good poems will be sung. Burton said that the essence of poetry lies in songs, and the focus lies in the musical beauty of poetry. Music is perfect enough for human hearing.
5. The taste is delicate. This kind of taste is beautiful, some people call it "poetry", which is the quality that makes us feel that a poem has become a poem. Taste is the artistic realm of poetry with beautiful language form, and it is the unique feeling that poetry gives us, such as the fragrance of tea and the sweetness of food. The style, spirit, literary talent and literary beauty of poetry are all elements that constitute the poetic flavor. However, the subtle meaning of poetry is often between the lines, which requires keen sensitivity to perceive, so Burton said, "Most smart and knowledgeable minds are enough to produce a lot of associations. Anyway, people with low intelligence will not appreciate poetry. " When poetry is translated from one language to another, it will be lost or even disappear completely.
It is precisely because poetry has such complex aesthetic characteristics that poetry has always been the most difficult to translate in all literary categories. Let's take a look at some famous translators' conclusions that poetry is difficult to translate or even untranslatable. Lv Yuan said: "Some foreign poems can be translated, and some foreign poems are really untranslatable." Wang said frankly, "Frankly speaking, I don't think poetry can be translated. The reason is simple: the charm and artistic conception of poetry are more popular, and its taste, that is, the reason why poetry is poetry, is largely organically dissolved in the language used by the poet when writing poetry, which cannot be expressed by another language (or dialect). "
Although poetry is difficult to translate, it is not untranslatable after all, because poets' inspiration is not limited by national boundaries and time, and they can communicate with each other, so poems from different countries and languages can also be translated into each other. Many people have always advocated that poetry can be translated. Chen Naixiong said: "Theoretically, there is no reason to think that poetry cannot be translated. Of course, because poetry also has its own characteristics different from the general literary form-a highly concentrated summary of life, full of strong feelings and rich imagination, harmonious language, rich musicality and so on. Translation does encounter some difficulties, but this cannot be an excuse for untranslatability … "Bakhudarov, a translation theorist in the former Soviet Union, pointed out:" The semantic differences between the two languages cannot be an insurmountable obstacle in translation. " Moreover, in the communication between people of different nationalities and in the communication of culture and literature, poetry translation is indeed essential. The practice of poetry translators from generation to generation has also proved that poetry can be translated. Therefore, poetry translation is both necessary and possible.
The following principles should be followed when translating poetry:
1. Before translating a poem, a translator should first check his interest and passion in what subject, and then look for a poet whose interest, enthusiasm and style are equivalent to his own. In a sense, translating a poem means making friends with the creator of the poem and asking for empathy. Only by identifying with the author can the translator be more familiar with, close to and love the author, and keep in line with the author in thought, speech, style and soul, so as to make a better translation.
2. Make yourself a poet, enter the poet's emotional world and experience the poet's joys and sorrows. When Cheng advocated poetry translation, "the translator must devote himself to the poet, make the poet himself, and then spit out the feelings boiling in his chest with all his strength and innocence." Fu Lei even advocated that "people who can't write poetry should never translate poetry, otherwise it is not only poetry, but also unlike prose." Of course, this requirement is a bit excessive, but it shows that in order to truly translate a good poem, the translator must try to understand the poet's mind, his ideals, personality, style and sentiment, try to communicate with him emotionally, and put his thoughts and feelings into the process of poetry translation.
3. In the process of translation, images in poetry should be paid special attention. When people read poetry, they should understand it with their heads on the one hand, and feel it with their hearts according to their past experience on the other. The image of poetry is a synthesis of intellectuality and sensibility at this time. Because one of the main functions of images is to stimulate feelings and arouse associations, translators should first appreciate and capture the images of the original poem when translating poems, and then put aside the shackles of the original poetic images to find images that can stimulate similar feelings and associations in the target language, such as the dragon image, which is an image of evil and violence in English culture and causes associations of disgust and terror. When a poem containing this image is translated into Chinese, the translator should consider it.
In order to arouse similar associations, we should not copy the image of the dragon.
4. Give consideration to both style and meaning. First of all, we must thoroughly understand the original work and define the style. Whether the original is simple or gorgeous, high or low, straightforward or indirect, we all need to understand it with our heart. If the style is not correct, poetry translation will be riding a blind horse. Secondly, when considering the transmission and translation of meaning, in the choice of words, the emphasis should be placed on the overall meaning, not on the correspondence of the literal meaning of individual words. That is to say, in order to convey the meaning of the original author, the translator should not be bound by the original word in the choice of words in the target language, but should boldly choose words that can cause the same effect in the target language according to the association that the original word can cause in the language. Lin Huangtian said: "What is beautiful in one language may be rough, ugly or even meaningless in another language, so the translator must choose words carefully for the translation. Improper choice of words will make the original beautiful clothes lose their luster and become ugly. "
5. Poetry must be translated like poetry, pursuing both the form of God and the form of form. In the process of poetry translation, we should recreate the rhythm of the target language on the basis of the rhythm of the original poem, so that it has the same acoustic effect as the original poem to some extent. In the choice of words, it is necessary to translate them into beautiful mother tongue and over-localize them; It is necessary to embody the translator's style, make the translated poem feel the charm of China's poems, and try to keep some features and flavors of the original poem. French poetry should have the charm of French language and culture, and English poetry should have the charm of British language and culture, so that people can feel that it is a foreign poem even if they don't know that the author of the original poem is a foreigner, and readers with high cultural literacy can also feel which country it is, thus enjoying the pleasure of reading exotic customs.