A Study of Poetry Translation Taking the Eight English Versions of Jing Ye Si as an Example

DOI

10.2991/icadce-18.2018.56How to use a DOI?

Keywords

poetry translation; characteristics of Chinese and western poetry; Jing Ye Si; English version

Abstract

Poetry translation is quite different from the translation of materials of other style because of the word employed, the artistic conception and other necessary points. This paper introduces the criteria of poetry translation, the analyzes the different characteristics of Chinese and Western poetry which must be taken into consideration in translating, introduces Li Bai’s poem, Jing Ye Si and the eight English versions of it, and finally studies them from the perspective of diction, rhymes and style. Half of the chosen versions of Jing Ye Si are in prosody, and the other half in prosaism. From the comparison tables we can see that prosody versions are more faithful to the content of the original, while prosaism versions are much better in rebuilding the atmosphere. Since Jing Ye Si is a poem which goes strictly to the rules of Chinese poetry, and because of the translation criteria of faithfulness to the style of the original, the author believes that prosody versions are better than prosaism versions.

Copyright

© 2018, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Miao Gao
PY  - 2018/07
DA  - 2018/07
TI  - A Study of Poetry Translation Taking the Eight English Versions of Jing Ye Si as an Example
BT  - Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Arts, Design and Contemporary Education (ICADCE 2018)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 266
EP  - 271
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/icadce-18.2018.56
DO  - 10.2991/icadce-18.2018.56
ID  - Gao2018/07
ER  -