An Analysis of Cultural Untranslatability with Eight English Versions of Jing Ye Si from with Experiential Metafunction

DOI

10.2991/icadce-18.2018.74How to use a DOI?

Keywords

cultural untranslatability; experiential metafunction; Jing Ye Si

Abstract

There are many disagreements on whether languages are translatable or untranslatable, or in certain cases, to what degree they are translatable. For translators, having a clear idea about untranslatability would be very helpful to their translation practice. And the translation of poems in Tang Dynasty is one of the hardest tasks in which untranslatable phenomenon happen most of the times. With examples, the author systematically analyzes the deep cultural causes of untranslatability. Taking linguist Halliday’s theory of experiential metafunction as the theoretical base, a comparative analysis is made from the process, actor and circumstance on the untranslatable phenomena found in the eight English version of Li Bai’s Jing Ye Si, among which four are prosaism and the other prosody. Research findings indicate that untranslatability inevitably exists in the process of translating; different understandings to the original poem lead to versions with different styles; and both translation of prosaism and prosody have their strong points. The thesis ends with some general evaluations of translation methods in eight English versions in the hope of offering some guidance to poetry translation.

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/).

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Miao Gao
PY  - 2018/07
DA  - 2018/07
TI  - An Analysis of Cultural Untranslatability with Eight English Versions of Jing Ye Si from with Experiential Metafunction
BT  - Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Arts, Design and Contemporary Education (ICADCE 2018)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 349
EP  - 356
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/icadce-18.2018.74
DO  - 10.2991/icadce-18.2018.74
ID  - Gao2018/07
ER  -