Li Bai's poetry was translated into English to spread Chinese culture

In the brilliant galaxy of Tang poetry, Li Bai's poetry (hereinafter referred to as "Li Shi") is a brilliant pearl, not only Chinese literati and readers are obsessed with it, but also many foreign scholars have a high interest in its research. Li Shiying's translation has a history of more than 200 years, most of which are selected translations, and few are full translations; in terms of translation techniques, most of them are scattered and less poetry. Different groups of translators have their own advantages in translating texts, and they have found different breakthroughs for the dissemination and reception of Li Shi in the West in the cultural "exchange".

Li Shiying's translation of the three stage questions

While there has been a debate about the translatability of poetry, efforts to translate poetry have never stopped. Since the middle of the 18th century, Li Shiying's translation activities have continued to this day. Through the systematic combing of Chinese and foreign translations, the author divides the history of Li Shiying's translation into three stages.

The first stage, before the early 20th century, was the early stage of Li Shiying's translation. At the end of the 16th century, with the arrival of missionaries in China, the collision of Chinese and foreign cultures gave birth to more Chinese poetry and English translations. Chinese scholar Wang Lina believes that the first to translate Li's poems into English was the British politician and poet Soame Jenyns. Later, British missionaries, diplomats, and sinologists such as John Francis Davis, James J. Legge, Robert Douglas, and Herbert Allen Giles tried to translate Li poems. Depishi translated "Gift wang lun" and "Xiaoqing". Douglas translated "Dengjinling Phoenix Terrace" and published the translation in his book "China", which is accompanied by pinyin of the original poem for foreign readers to recite.

During this period, Li Shiying's translators were mostly British. The translator did not study Li shi as an independent object, but as part of Chinese cultural classics or Tang Dynasty literature, and the number of translated Li poems was small and the depth of research was insufficient. Influenced by the cultural differences between China and the West, translators often misread and have a bias in their understanding of the original meaning of poetry. Most translators are influenced by the trend of Western poetry creation and use scattered forms of translation, and it is difficult for the translation to reproduce the phonological beauty of the original poem.

The second stage was the first half of the 20th century, during which Li Shi's translation entered a new level, gradually forming some translation guidelines. At that time, the United States began to play a new role on the world stage, becoming increasingly active in politics, economy and culture, and there were also some representative Li poetry translators. These include American poets Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, Witter Bynner, and others. In addition, the contributions of the British sinologist Arthur Waley and the Japanese translator Kaoru Kohata cannot be ignored.

Pound was a representative of the free-form English translation of Chinese poetry at that time, and one of the leaders of ancient Chinese poetry into the American poetry scene. His translations cathay and Lustra contain 7 and 12 Li poems, respectively. He broke through the shackles of the law and focused on conveying the mood of the original work, which made his translations popular with Western readers. At that time, the Jade Mountain: a Chinese Anthology, Being Three Hundred Poems of the T'ang Dynasty, which was well received by The Western academic community, was also well received by Binner and others. The book contains 27 poems of Li, which also uses the scattered paraphrasing method. Among Willie's translations of Li's poems are More Translations from the Chinese and A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems. He also listed 23 translations of Li poems in "The Poet Li Po," published in the London edition of the Asian Quarterly Review. Japanese scholar Kaoru Obata published the English version of The Works of Li Po, the Chinese Poet while studying in the United States. Like Pound, he adopts a loose paraphrase method, not limited to form and rhythm, and his translation aims to convey to the reader the thoughts and feelings contained in the original poem. "Li Bai's Poetry Collection" has been reprinted several times in Europe and the United States, and it still attracts and influences countless readers.

During this period, the translations of Li Shi's American translators began to surpass their British counterparts in both quantity and quality, and the group of translators developed from missionaries and diplomats to professional translators and poets, which may be due to the vigorous New Poetry Movement in the United States. At its climax, the movement used ancient Chinese poetry as a weapon in an attempt to break free from the shackles of the British poetic tradition.

The third stage is the middle and late 20th century, in this stage, especially since the end of the 20th century, domestic translators began to exert efforts in the translation of Chinese poetry and English, not only a large number of translators emerged, but also produced translations with superior communication effects, making great contributions to Western readers' understanding of classical Chinese poetry. Representative translators include Weng Xianliang, Xu Yuanchong, etc. Weng Xianliang advocated the use of free bodies to express the imagery contained in Chinese poetry. In his monograph "English Translation of Ancient Poems" (including Li Poems), Weng Xianliang applies the theory of Chinese poetry to English translation in practice, and the selected poems are wide in time span and variety, which is a unique masterpiece of Chinese poetry and English translation. Xu Yuanchong believes that the English translation of Chinese poetry should not only be neat and rhyming, but also have to be full of realms and strive for perfection. He devoted himself to translating Tang poems and Song poems into English rhymes, proposing the "Three Beauty" theory and applying it to translation practice, especially poetry translation.

In recent years, more and more Chinese translators have participated in Li Shi's English translation, and through translation, they have tried to introduce Li Shi to Western readers, and their contribution lies not only in translation practice, but also in translation theory. In October 2020, Professor Zhao Yanchun of the School of Foreign Chinese of Shanghai University translated the book "The Complete Works of Li Bai's Poetry into English" published by Shanghai University Press. The book contains 1052 poems by Li Bai in 8 volumes. In the book, Zhao Yanchun shows readers and other translators the specific application and effect of correlation parameters in the translation process, based on the conclusion of the translation theory he founded, and provides an indicator framework for readers to analyze and evaluate translations as a whole.

The prose of the poems varies

In general, foreign Translations of Li Poems are mainly scattered and selective translations, and domestic Translations of Li Poems are mainly based on poetry styles and selected translations. There has always been a dispute between poetic style and prose in poetry translation, and the focus of the debate is whether the rhyme of the original poem should be retained in the translation. From the investigation of the criticism theory of translator behavior, it can be seen that the poet is biased towards the language person, which shows the linguistic nature; the scattered translator is biased towards the social person, and its sociality is more prominent; the two types of translators are connected to each other, but the emphasis is different. Zhou Lingshun, a professor at the School of Foreign Chinese of Yangzhou University, believes that the positioning of the translator on the original text, the positioning of the translator on the reader (including translation in and out), the positioning of the translator on himself, and even the positioning of the translator on the translation all directly affect the trend of the translation, and several "positioning" are related to each other. These are all out of pragmatic needs, so there will be corresponding pragmatic attitudes and means, even for literary texts that are partial to "seeking truth", they must also maintain a greater degree of freedom.

Some of the translators mentioned above have translated Li shi as prose, and some translators have even translated scattered as poetry. The reason may be that the literary text is more popular, so there are more elements of translator intervention. For translators, it is common for translators to partially deviate from "faithfulness" in order to achieve the best contextual effect or even market effect, which is to look at the problem from a dynamic humanistic perspective.

Looking at the history of Li Shiying's translation, the author believes that although there are many translators and translations, there are also deficiencies and problems. First, in terms of the number of selected poems, the vast majority of translations cover a limited list of Li poems, and the phenomenon of retranslation and retranslation is obvious. Second, in terms of the quality of translated poems, due to the different identities of translators, the purpose of translated poems, and the concept of translated poems, the quality of existing translated poems is uneven. Third, in the technique of translating poetry, the poetic/rhyming/grammatical style, the scattered/free body have all been seen, and the translation community has not reached a consensus on its translation method, so that the translators have done their own thing, creating translations that are arbitrary or even uneven.

According to the identity characteristics of Li Shiying's translators, they can be divided into four groups: missionaries or diplomats, sinologists or Anglo-American scholars, poets and Chinese scholars, whose translations have their own advantages. Missionaries or diplomats often translate poems to localize The Chinese poetry grid, sinologists or Anglo-American scholars focus on the reproduction of the meaning and spirit of Li poems, poet groups focus on the aesthetic pursuit of translated poems, and Chinese scholars pay more attention to the transmission of Chinese cultural elements by Li poems. In the cultural "social interaction" (social interaction), the above domestic and foreign translators have found different breakthroughs for the dissemination and reception of Li Shi in English-speaking countries, so that the poetry immortals travel far away and the poetry soul spreads. Through the continuous pursuit and efforts of Chinese and foreign translators, foreign readers have a greater understanding of Li Bai and his poetry, and at the same time, li poetry has an increasing influence on world culture. This has had a positive and far-reaching impact on the international dissemination of China's excellent traditional culture. Li Shiying's translation can not only help the wide dissemination and research of Classical Chinese Literature, but also enrich English literature to a certain extent, and promote the integration of Chinese and Western cultures and mutual learning among civilizations.

(This paper is a phased result of the National Social Science Foundation's key project "Comparative Study on the English Translation and Translation of Li Bai's Complete Works of Poetry" (17AZD040) and the 2020 Gansu Provincial Foreign Language Teacher Development Research Project "Research on the Influence of the Network Practice Community on the Research Leadership Development of English Teachers in Colleges and Universities in Gansu Province")

(Author Affilications:School of Foreign Chinese, Northwest Normal University)

Editor: Chen Xuanyu