Source of this article: "Yangtze River Academic" No. 2, 2021
Reprinted from: International Sinology Research and Database Construction, thanks!
Author Profile: Xie Yanming (1968-), male, from Chibi, Hubei, professor at the School of Foreign Languages, Central South University of Finance and Economics, and is mainly engaged in the research on English poetry and poetry translation.
Abstract: After Han Han Dong Zhongshu Han Han Han Han Han singular views on the poetry interpretation of "poetry without interpretation", Chinese poetry researchers have been interpreting classical poetry in an all-out way since ancient times. However, influenced by the normalized Chinese cultural thinking structure, many classical poetry texts cannot be fully explained from multiple angles. Translation is the translator's search and interpretation of the original text using the "other" thinking. After the intervention of foreign cultural thinking, the translator will draw a different interpretation from the traditional exegesis , and discover various problems such as logical thinking and narrative structure from Chinese classical poetry texts, thereby producing a more vivid and reasonable translation.
Keywords: Other thinking, narrative grammar, narrative logic, poetry translation, text interpretation
DOI: 10.19866/j.cnki.cjxs.2021.02.009
Su Shi said in " Title Xilinbi ": "I don't know the true face of Mount Lu because I am in this mountain." When a person is in something for a long time, he may not know its "true face". China is the country of poetry. Since ancient times, poets have created countless excellent works; China is also the country of poetry education. Poetry teaches us to learn language, establish ourselves and even “govern the country and pacify the world.” We can memorize many poems and citations easily. We love poetry so much and attach so much importance to poetry. Can we fully recognize poetry in our country's culture? Dong Zhongshu, a great scholar in the Han Dynasty, put forward the interpretation of "poetry without interpretation". Many poems can be understood from multiple angles. Even experts and experts in poetry research dare not say that they can explain a poem in all aspects. In order to explain poetry in all aspects, in addition to the nature of "poetry is unexplained", we will also be influenced by the normalized Chinese culture thinking structure and cannot break out of the limitations of thinking. Although the translator's reading behavior is difficult to translatorially translating to the regulations of a specific social, historical and cultural discourse system, the translation site is after all "a contact area for the encounter between the self and the others" [1]. Translation is the process of retrieval and interpretation of the original text by the translator using the "other" thinking. The "other" thinking is a breakthrough and supplement to the "me" thinking. When the "other" thinking looks at the classical poetry text, the translator will break through the solidified single cultural thinking and discover the shortcomings and limitations of traditional exegesis, thereby producing a new understanding and interpretation of the original text.
1.
"I" and "Other" in poetry translation are both communication behaviors in two languages and interaction behaviors in two cultures. Language is one of the important carriers of culture, and culture is the breath of life of language. Without culture, language will lose its spirituality and become a symbol without a soul. Language and culture are naturally inseparable. Language comes from culture and will continue to cultivate and regulate culture. Because a language and the knowledge generated by that language will provide us with habitual, predictable, and computable understanding, allowing us to identify things and write events in a given pattern, language forms a specific cultural thinking structure in the process of cultivation and regulation. This structure can be inherited like a gene, forming a relatively stable thinking pattern, that is, a normalized thinking structure in a specific language. In Li Zehou's words, it is "accumulation", which is a continuous accumulation of social memory, through which human individuals are socialized and adapted to a certain culture. "Accumulation" also forms a "cultural psychological structure" [2]. The "structure" of human cognition is the function of human common experience with historical and cultural particularity. It can be said that the cultural thinking structure of each language is unique and different from other languages. Each cultural thinking has its own uniqueness, but also has certain limitations, which will develop a "habitually lack of understanding" of this culture [3].
translation is the act of foreign language thinking forcibly intervening in the thinking structure of the native language. During the translation process, foreign languages and native languages are integrated. On the one hand, the source language text is decoded and converted, and on the other hand, the thinking structure of the native language is retrieved and interpreted, thus breaking through a relatively stable thinking structure of the language and better understanding its limitations. This article sets the source language - Chinese - as "me" and the translated language is "other". "The Other is relative to the Self. The Self must have selfhood or identity, and the Other must have 'otherness' or 'alterity'. "[4] "The Other is a mirror to know the self. Only in the dialogue between me and the others can I know my existence." [5] German sinologist Gu Bin has achieved remarkable achievements in sinology research and translation. His research has greatly supplemented and improved the shortcomings of Chinese scholars in their research on China. He summarized from his own experience and experience: "I cannot understand myself with the reference of self, I can only refer to that different thing... Because when we speak, we cannot hear the sounds others hear, nor see our own faces (if we do not use the mirror)." [6] Since the translator is familiar with the source language and the translated language, and is also familiar with the cultures represented by the two languages, he can use the thinking modes of the two cultures to interpret the text, so when he faces the original text to construct the brain text that produces the translation, he must have integrated the "me" thinking and the "other" thinking.
There is a certain difference between the "me" thinking and the "other" thinking, and this difference is mainly caused by differences in language expression and different cultural thinking patterns. There are great differences in grammatical rules between Chinese and English, and lead to differences in cultural thinking, so there are also differences in the interpretation activities of poetry. Chinese, especially ancient Chinese, has relatively flexible grammar and maintains a loose relationship between words and sentences. English words should form sentences and sentences should form chapters, and many "divided elements" are needed [7], such as adding articles before nouns, positioning and defining relationships require prepositions and connections, and changes in verbs should maintain consistency with subject, tense and voice, etc. "The law in English is the task of specifying, clarifying and explaining the relationship between people, things, things and things." [8] Chinese (including classical Chinese) actually has grammatical rules, but it is much looser than Indo-European language . The words and sentences in Chinese classical poetry can also break through this loose grammar limitation and carry out "self-grammatical liberation" [9]. The loose grammatical rules make the words and lines of Chinese poetry have discrete characteristics, and are not so close in logic. Just like the relationship between the lines of poetry that emerged in the Book of Songs and the theme lines, there is no necessary logical connection between "the doves are singing in the river island" and "the beautiful lady is a good match for gentlemen". It seems that the "phonology" outside of the meaning connects them. The words and sentences of English poetry obviously need to pay attention to the connection between grammar and poetry and logical connection. Sonnets of Shakespeare are the product of typical English thinking. Their chapter structure is basically the same as English prose. For example, the beginning of "Sonnet18" (Sonnet18) introduces the main sentence from a question (Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?/Thou art more lovely and more temperature.), and then argue from two aspects anyway (how summer is not good, how "you" is better than summer), and finally make a final conclusion (So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this and this gives life to thee.). Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)'s To his Coy Mistress even uses the logical reasoning of "syllogism". The first verse of this poem makes a hypothesis: "If our world is big enough, time enough, Miss, you are not a sin." (Had we but world enough, and time./This coyness, Lady, were no crime.) The second verse uses "but" to make a turning point, "But behind me, I always hear the chariot with time wings flew hurriedly.” (But at my back I always hear/ Time’s wingèd chariot anxious near.) The last section uses “therefore” to conclude, “Now let us sport us while we May). Poems written in logical reasoning like this are rare in Chinese classical poetry. Chinese poetry is much looser and more casual in terms of chapter structure and poetic expression.
Flexible grammar allows ancient Chinese poets to splice and combine poems as they please, and even readers can participate in it, splicing verses that did not belong to the same poem and combine them into new text. For example, "A red apricot tree comes out of the wall, and thousands of pear blossoms bloom"; "The flow of flows down three thousand feet, no And Wang Lun sends me love", etc. These spliced lines of poetry were not first created by netizens today. The ancients called this kind of splicing "collected sentences", that is, select ready-made verses from different poems, and then cleverly compiled into new poems. Tang Xianzu 's " Peony Pavilion " has a total of 55 plays, and there are as many as 54 poems. For example, in the 52nd episode of "Suo Yuan", Wang's poem appeared on the stage: "What is the remaining orioles know about autumn, and they are sad every day and see the water flowing alone. So I went from Baxia to Wuxia , and mistakenly used Hangzhou as Bianzhou . ”[10] The first sentence is spliced from Li Yu 's " Qiu Ying ", the second sentence is spliced from Wang Changling's "Long Sui Tower", the third sentence is from Du Fu 's " Wen Guan Jun to Accept Henan and Hebei 's " Title Lin'an Di " by Lin Sheng . "This flexibility allows a free relationship between words and readers, and readers maintain a "close and distant" interpretation activity between words. ”[11] This is undoubtedly a major advantage of Chinese poetry. Indo-European poetry cannot have this narrative flexibility. However, the discreteness and flexibility of narratives in Chinese poetry often lead to imperfect logic and narrative omissions. However, the normalized thinking structure of Chinese culture often makes Chinese readers turn a blind eye to it, take it for granted, and take it for granted. Therefore, these defects will not be investigated in depth during the reading process, or these defects will not affect their reading and understanding. However, if we translate Chinese poetry into English, we will use the English thinking structure to retrieve the source text. Under the influence of the "other" thinking, some logical defects and narrative omissions in Chinese poetry are easier to identify. Below, this article uses " Nineteen Ancient Poems " as an example to explore how the translator's "other" thinking reflects classical poetry.
"Nineteen Ancient Poems" is a group of ancient poems created in the late Eastern Han Dynasty. The collection name comes from "Wenxuan" by Prince Zhaoming of Liang Dynasty Xiao Tong . He selected nineteen poems from the anonymous "Ancient Poems" circulated at that time into "Wenxuan" and named them. None of these nineteen poems have formal titles, and we are used to defining the first sentence of each poem as the title [12]. These nineteen poems are good at lyricism, Good at using things to set off, their artistic achievements have been extremely high. In the past two thousand years, they have been praised by literary theorists and poets. Southern Dynasty Literary theorists Liu Xie in his masterpiece " Wenxin Diaolong " called them "the crown of five-character" [13]. He said: "Looking at its structure prose, it is straight but not wild, it is graceful and attached to things, and it is sad and affectionate, which is actually the crown of five-character. " Zhong Rong 's " Poetry Collection " says: "The text is gentle and beautiful, the meaning is sad and far away, and the heart is thrilling. It can be said that it is almost a word of money. ”[14] Even contemporary poetic master Ye Jiaying said, “You cannot pick out which sentence or which word is the best, because the author’s feelings are concentrated in the whole poem, and it is a complete one. The whole poem is good, and you can’t pick up words and sentences at all. ”[15] In the eyes of poetic critics throughout the ages, these nineteen poems are perfect. Using a single "me" mindset, we may not be able to fully interpret and evaluate them, and naturally regard them as the best in five-character poems. This habitual lack of comprehensive understanding, "cannot relieve our self-inflation"[16]. These nineteen poems are undoubtedly extremely artistic achievements, so translators who like to translate Chinese classical poetry often choose or translate them in full.However, when I read their English translations, I found that the advantages of these nineteen poems are very obvious, but the defects also exist. This article mainly takes the translations of Wang Rongpei , J.P.Seaton, and D.Hinton as examples to look at these nineteen poems. Wang Rongpei's translation was selected as the "Greater Chinese Library"; Sidon and Hinton are famous contemporary American translators and sinologists, with profound attainments in Chinese classical poetry. Their translation is a reflection of the original work under the influence of cultural thinking, and have typical "other" thinking characteristics.
2. From the perspective of narrative grammar,
"Nineteen Ancient Poems"
As mentioned in the previous article, Chinese text lacks many "subdivided elements" in grammatical structure. The text of the poem shows the characteristics of blurred subject words, unclear tense, unclear word relationships, uncertain directions, and unclear chapter structure. These uncertainties have caused certain obstacles to translation. When translators translate Chinese and English, translators often need to clarify these uncertainties. For example, the first poem "Nineteen Ancient Poems" "Everything and Performing" by Ye Jiaying believes that it is a "good poem that is easy to understand but difficult to understand" [17]. The "difficult" point - the "difficult" point - is that there are various uncertainties in this poem. The first sentence "Everything is more important than doing" has no subject, nor a certain time and place, but the translator often needs to determine the subject and verb tense, so he gets into a dilemma: Should he be a traveler or a sending away as the subject? Did the action happen in the past or present? Is the action performer a man or a woman? Without the intervention of "other", we may not need answers to these questions. The second sentence "Diet from the Lord" is also an unorthodox sentence, but it explains the object of the second person "jun" ("jun" can also be defined as the third person), but it is still impossible to determine whether it is a traveler who is far away or a passerby who is "against you". The following two translations use two different perspectives. One is the words of the traveler (or the mistress at home) to the traveler, and the other is the words of the traveler to the traveler:
. On and on, alas, on and on!
Far away from me you will be gone! [18]
.On and on, and on and on again,
from you, my Lord, my love, I’m parted in this life.[19]
In terms of tense, when Wang's translation adopts the future, it seems that the traveler (you) and the narrator (me) are still together now, the traveler is about to travel, and the narrator is seeing off; when Sidon's translation adopts the present, it seems that the traveler has left. Next, "There are more than ten thousand miles apart, each one is at the end of the sky. The road is long and long, how can we know when we meet?" From the sad emotions when we parted, "I continue to write all the way, one sentence is far away, and one sentence is despair, from the increasingly distant distance that is gradually drifting away, to the sober cognition that blocks each other's side..." [20] Of course, we cannot clarify whether this paragraph is a narrative of a traveler or a narrative of a sending away. The last two lines of this poem, "Don't say again if you give up, try to add more meals" are also different explanations. "Abandon donation" does not explain the subject or the object. Who abandoned whom, or was it a person or something? "Don't say again" is "Don't say again" or "I won't say again"? Is " working hard to add rice to " "Is "I want you to have a good meal" (although I was abandoned, I still care for the other party) or "I want to have a good meal" (eat well, protect your body to treat gentlemen)? Chinese readers may not need to delve into these issues to understand the poem, but the translator does not, he must understand these uncertainties. The following two translations represent these two interpretations:
1.I can’t tell you how abandoned I feel,
but I’m eating well, building strength.[21]
.Do forget about it! Let it be!
I hope you’ll eat your fill and be carefulfree![22]
Siton translated these two lines of poetry as “And so my heart will say no more than this: try hard to stay well” [23], he ignored the word "abandoned" and blurred "who wants whoever wants to keep a good body". Although it is suspected of missing translation, it is also an explanation.The translator needs to clarify the various uncertainties of this poem from the standpoint of the "other" language thinking. However, when the translation clarifies these relationships, the translator can only translate a story with a clear relationship.
This poem, like many Chinese classical poems, omits subject or object, and cancels the preposition that points out the relationship between time and space, so that the narrative "there is no distinction between ancient and modern times, the earth is no distinction between north and south, people are no distinction between men and women, and things are no distinction between long journeys and farewells." [24] It only establishes a "basic" of narrative or lyrical [25]. The ultimate cleverness of this "basic" is that it can build many stories. All the unclear relationships in "Everything and Going" are allowed by readers to explain and build stories around this "basic form". Unfortunately, when translating it into English, the translator can only translate one of the stories in a "compromise" way, because the "segmentation factor" of the English language cannot generate many stories.
In addition, punctuation marks are even more uncertain in Chinese classical poetry, because ancient Chinese originally had punctuation marks. After some poems are added with special punctuation marks - such as quotes -, the grammatical structure is clear, and the narrative and lyricism appear more vivid. There are four lines of poems in " The cold air in the winter of the year ": "The guest came from a distance and left me a letter. The first one said long-lasting long-term love, and the next one said long-term separation." If you only use commas and periods to separate the lines of the poem, these four lines are just descriptive words. Sidon translated these four sentences as:
A traveler from afar has come
and brought a missive meant for me:
"I’ll forever think of you," it opened
and ended "long though we be parted."[26]
He translated the descriptive discourse into direct quotes, and the story narrated in the poem became vivid and interesting, bringing the readers closer to the story. It can be seen from this that with the help of the "other" thinking and through Western grammatical structure analysis, we can not only discover and understand the narrative "basic" in Chinese poetry, but also expand the space for poetry interpretation.
3. From the perspective of narrative logic,
"Nineteen Ancient Poems"
As the "Crown of Five Characters", "Nineteen Poems", is actually not that perfect. There are also some shortcomings in narrative logic, and some of the shortcomings are not easy to be discovered in the single "me" perspective. And these shortcomings are easily presented under the search for the "other" thinking. Although "logic" (transliteration of logic) is a foreign word, it does not mean that China has no logic since ancient times, but we call it "famous science". Chinese classical poetry actually pays attention to logical structure, and also has the concept of logical self-consistent "start, inherit, turn, and turn". However, Chinese poetry rarely uses logical techniques such as " syllogism ". Poets pay more attention to emotional analysis rather than rational reasoning. They often focus on implicitness and replace rational logic with "not saying it out loud" and "taking the way around Zen" [27]. In some poems, discrete connections of things and loose grammatical structures will cause the narrative contradictions before and after, the logical structure is unreasonable, and the inconsistency between the front and back.
Although " Long Astrology " is known as the best Chinese love poem, although its ending two sentences - "It's full of water, and it's hard to speak" - are extremely outstanding, but this poem makes a logical mistake, that is, inconsistency. At the beginning, this poem uses the word "double" to describe the distance between the Altar and the Vega (Hehan Girl), but the third to last sentence says "The Hehan and Han are clear and shallow, how many are the differences between them." The water of the Milky Way is clear and not deep, and the Morning Glory and the Weaver Girl are not far away. This is inconsistent with the "distance" at the beginning. Didn't it be said that they were very far apart? Why do we say here again "It's not far away"? They are only separated by two banks of the river and can look at each other. Perhaps we can use the explanation of "geographical distance" and "psychological distance" in modern literary criticism to start with a distant geographical distance, and end with a not distant psychological distance. It seems that this can transform contradictions, but this explanation may not be suitable for Chinese classical poetry.
Many translators may find that "how many are there" interpreted as "how far away can the morning glory and the Weaver Girl beside each other?" is contradictory to the "distance" at the beginning, so the description of the distance "how many are there" is ignored and not translated to avoid inconsistencies, such as Sidon's translation:
Afar, far off, the Herd Boy,
White, bright, the maiden by the River in the Sky.
⋯⋯
The River in the Sky is clear, and shallow,
yet how shall they ever cross, to meet again.[28]
The logical contradiction before and after also appears in the poem "Handle in the Courtyard of " if we follow the philology of "Handle in " that has been used in the past two thousand years. "There are strange trees in the courtyard, and the green leaves are blooming. Climbing the strips and breaking their glory, you will leave your thoughts with your thoughts. The fragrance fills your sleeves, and the road is far away. How precious is this thing? But when you feel the difference between the scriptures." This poem describes a woman's deep nostalgia for her husband who is traveling far away. From trees and leaves, from leaves and flowers, from flowers and picking, from picking and sending, from sending and thinking. The beginning of the poem says that there is a "strange tree" growing in the courtyard. According to the understanding of many scholars, "a strange tree is like a good tree", that is, "an extraordinary tree", is naturally rare. Zhu Ziqing believes that the "strange tree" comes from Cai Zhi's "Han Guan Dianzi": "The strange tree planted in the palace" is not an ordinary tree. However, the ending of this poem says "How precious is this thing" (the flowers growing on this tree are not precious), isn't this a contradiction? Wang Rongpei translated this poem as:
In the courtyard stands a tree so rare,
With leaves so green and flowers sweet and fair.
I pluck a flower from a twig above,
To offer as a token of my love.
In my laps and sleeps, sweet fragment stays.
But flowers will not reach him who’s far away.
Such a gift is not the worthy kind;
Long parting weights alone upon my mind.[29]
translates "Speech tree" as "a rare tree" and "He Zugui" as "not the worthy kind". Obviously, not only did not avoid this contradiction, but it also highlighted it more. Of course, Wang Rongpei's translation is based on the interpretation of "strange trees" in the past two thousand years. Is there any inconsistency in this poem? The author has consulted the explanation of the word "就" in "就文", one of which says "就氱文, one is "就氱氱". The "odd" here means "odd number", that is, "no even, no double". In the late Eastern Han Dynasty, "strange" already had the meaning of "uneven". "The Classic of Mountains and Seas·Overseas Western Classic" says: "In a country with strange arms, the person has one arm and three eyes, and has yin and yang." In this poem, if the "special tree" is interpreted as "the tree that is uneven, the tree that is lonely" can be compared to a mistress who is alone at home. Although she is married, her husband is traveling far away and leaving her alone to guard the empty room. Isn't this the same as "the tree that is uneven"? This tree in the courtyard is a lonely woman trapped in the boudoir.
can be seen that sometimes the above problems do not exist in the poems themselves, but due to the influence of solidified single thinking, especially guided by the "authoritative" interpretation from the beginning, the interpretation of some poems is biased. When we try to translate them into English, through the search of the "other" thinking, we can find that according to traditional interpretation, translation may have deviations in language understanding and logic.
"The Great Altair" still has the problem of unreasonable structure and insufficient response. The first two lines of this poem use the description of "double distance" and "biaojia", which leads to the two stars "Altius" and "Hehan Nu" (Vehicle Star), which are used to describe two lovers who love each other but cannot stay together. Unlike Shakespeare's "18th" who proposes contrasting at the beginning, and then expands the balance between these two sides to express emotions, this poem starts from the third sentence to describe the longing of "Vei Girl" for " Altitus ", without a single sentence of "Altitus" describing "Altitus" alone. This lyrical description does not correspond to the first two sentences, causing an unbalanced psychological response.Let's read Hinton's translation again, and this feeling of imbalance is particularly obvious:
Far, far off the Ox-Herd star drifts.
And the Star River’s radiant lady—
she weaves shadow-and-light finery,
her shuttle whispering, whispering
all day long. She’s never finished.
Her tears fall, scattering like rain.
Star River’s a crytalline shallows,
so thin keeping them apart, a mere.
wisp of water brimming, brimming.
They gaze and gaze, and say nothing.[30]
Read this translation, readers will feel that the first sentence is abrupt. It neither serves as the theme of the whole poem nor leads to the following lines. Of course, this is not a matter of translation, but the original poem lacks reasonable and balanced narrative lyricism. The same problem exists in " Qingqinglingling and Baibai ". The poet passed by a grave in Beimang Mountain in Luoyang and saw the hills covered with green cypress trees. He thought of the person lying in the grave, and then thought of the short life, like a white horse passing by in an instant. "Life in the world is like a traveler who travels far away." Since life is so short, we should live happily, abandon our worries and live with quality. Since ancient times, wine has been an important tool to improve the quotient of happiness. The poet advises friends to drink a cup of wine and entertain each other, and not to care about the amount and thickness of the wine. "Driving a slow horse, the game is like Luo." Let's drive a slow horse to Nanyang City and Luoyang City to play, so that we can temporarily eliminate inner depression and make people forget their worries; traveling can feel the happiness of the outside world and make our body and mind happy. However, the second half of this poem does not mention Nanyang, only Luoyang . "How gloomy in Luoyang, the crowns and belts are connected by themselves." The poet depicts the prosperous scene of Luoyang, as well as the "King and Prince's House" with many palaces and temples, carved beams and embroidered columns, and painted buildings. Finally, he used "The feast to entertain the hearts, why should we be forced to enjoy our hearts?" (Let us enjoy this luxurious feast to make our hearts happy. What does it force me to be happy?) However, the "Nanyang City" mentioned in the aforementioned article does not mention a word in the second half, and does not respond to the previous article, which will inevitably make readers feel disturbed.
After searching the "other" thinking, we found that "Nineteen Ancient Poems" as the "Crown of Five Characters" has many other problems. For example, the four sentences at the beginning of " Bright Moon and Night Light " "The bright Moon and Night Light are singing in the east wall. Yuheng refers to Bright Moon and Night Light , how can the stars be vivid?" These four sentences describe natural landscapes, sometimes written in the sky, sometimes written in the ground, sometimes jumping to the sky, and sometimes falling to the ground, making the narrative disordered and a little confused. Some poems have different themes before and after, such as " East City is tall and long" does not look like a poem, but two poems with different themes. There are also some poems that describe life ambitions and different states. The first part of " Today's Good Banquet " originally expressed the confusion and depression of life frustration or unsuccessfulness, but was written with great enthusiasm; the theme of the latter part changed, turning into the lament of impermanence of life, and asked readers to quickly seek a high position to occupy the key points.
translation activity process is often a comprehensive process of the translator's "self" and "other" thinking. The translator will consciously or unconsciously interpret the text "to convert it into an interculturality problem, that is, how to form mutual understanding between cultures, improve each individual's ability to transcend itself and interact with other cultures, and thus build a complete self-awareness. To achieve this, you can only 'start from the other', suspend your own preferences, so as to see the others, hear the others, and then understand the others, and construct a multi-dimensional perspective of culture" [31]. China is a great country in poetry, and the practice of poetry exegesis has a history of more than two thousand years, but we cannot be closed to our own theories and methods. We must integrate with the world and let the cultural thinking of "other" intervene. "The single perspective of Chinese culture has limitations. This is because we agree with the proposition that Chinese literature (culture) foreign translation is a cross-cultural behavior.
Source of this article: "Yangtze River Academic" No. 2, 2021
Reprinted from: International Sinology Research and Database Construction, thanks!
Author Profile: Xie Yanming (1968-), male, from Chibi, Hubei, professor at the School of Foreign Languages, Central South University of Finance and Economics, and is mainly engaged in the research on English poetry and poetry translation.
Abstract: After Han Han Dong Zhongshu Han Han Han Han Han singular views on the poetry interpretation of "poetry without interpretation", Chinese poetry researchers have been interpreting classical poetry in an all-out way since ancient times. However, influenced by the normalized Chinese cultural thinking structure, many classical poetry texts cannot be fully explained from multiple angles. Translation is the translator's search and interpretation of the original text using the "other" thinking. After the intervention of foreign cultural thinking, the translator will draw a different interpretation from the traditional exegesis , and discover various problems such as logical thinking and narrative structure from Chinese classical poetry texts, thereby producing a more vivid and reasonable translation.
Keywords: Other thinking, narrative grammar, narrative logic, poetry translation, text interpretation
DOI: 10.19866/j.cnki.cjxs.2021.02.009
Su Shi said in " Title Xilinbi ": "I don't know the true face of Mount Lu because I am in this mountain." When a person is in something for a long time, he may not know its "true face". China is the country of poetry. Since ancient times, poets have created countless excellent works; China is also the country of poetry education. Poetry teaches us to learn language, establish ourselves and even “govern the country and pacify the world.” We can memorize many poems and citations easily. We love poetry so much and attach so much importance to poetry. Can we fully recognize poetry in our country's culture? Dong Zhongshu, a great scholar in the Han Dynasty, put forward the interpretation of "poetry without interpretation". Many poems can be understood from multiple angles. Even experts and experts in poetry research dare not say that they can explain a poem in all aspects. In order to explain poetry in all aspects, in addition to the nature of "poetry is unexplained", we will also be influenced by the normalized Chinese culture thinking structure and cannot break out of the limitations of thinking. Although the translator's reading behavior is difficult to translatorially translating to the regulations of a specific social, historical and cultural discourse system, the translation site is after all "a contact area for the encounter between the self and the others" [1]. Translation is the process of retrieval and interpretation of the original text by the translator using the "other" thinking. The "other" thinking is a breakthrough and supplement to the "me" thinking. When the "other" thinking looks at the classical poetry text, the translator will break through the solidified single cultural thinking and discover the shortcomings and limitations of traditional exegesis, thereby producing a new understanding and interpretation of the original text.
1.
"I" and "Other" in poetry translation are both communication behaviors in two languages and interaction behaviors in two cultures. Language is one of the important carriers of culture, and culture is the breath of life of language. Without culture, language will lose its spirituality and become a symbol without a soul. Language and culture are naturally inseparable. Language comes from culture and will continue to cultivate and regulate culture. Because a language and the knowledge generated by that language will provide us with habitual, predictable, and computable understanding, allowing us to identify things and write events in a given pattern, language forms a specific cultural thinking structure in the process of cultivation and regulation. This structure can be inherited like a gene, forming a relatively stable thinking pattern, that is, a normalized thinking structure in a specific language. In Li Zehou's words, it is "accumulation", which is a continuous accumulation of social memory, through which human individuals are socialized and adapted to a certain culture. "Accumulation" also forms a "cultural psychological structure" [2]. The "structure" of human cognition is the function of human common experience with historical and cultural particularity. It can be said that the cultural thinking structure of each language is unique and different from other languages. Each cultural thinking has its own uniqueness, but also has certain limitations, which will develop a "habitually lack of understanding" of this culture [3].
translation is the act of foreign language thinking forcibly intervening in the thinking structure of the native language. During the translation process, foreign languages and native languages are integrated. On the one hand, the source language text is decoded and converted, and on the other hand, the thinking structure of the native language is retrieved and interpreted, thus breaking through a relatively stable thinking structure of the language and better understanding its limitations. This article sets the source language - Chinese - as "me" and the translated language is "other". "The Other is relative to the Self. The Self must have selfhood or identity, and the Other must have 'otherness' or 'alterity'. "[4] "The Other is a mirror to know the self. Only in the dialogue between me and the others can I know my existence." [5] German sinologist Gu Bin has achieved remarkable achievements in sinology research and translation. His research has greatly supplemented and improved the shortcomings of Chinese scholars in their research on China. He summarized from his own experience and experience: "I cannot understand myself with the reference of self, I can only refer to that different thing... Because when we speak, we cannot hear the sounds others hear, nor see our own faces (if we do not use the mirror)." [6] Since the translator is familiar with the source language and the translated language, and is also familiar with the cultures represented by the two languages, he can use the thinking modes of the two cultures to interpret the text, so when he faces the original text to construct the brain text that produces the translation, he must have integrated the "me" thinking and the "other" thinking.
There is a certain difference between the "me" thinking and the "other" thinking, and this difference is mainly caused by differences in language expression and different cultural thinking patterns. There are great differences in grammatical rules between Chinese and English, and lead to differences in cultural thinking, so there are also differences in the interpretation activities of poetry. Chinese, especially ancient Chinese, has relatively flexible grammar and maintains a loose relationship between words and sentences. English words should form sentences and sentences should form chapters, and many "divided elements" are needed [7], such as adding articles before nouns, positioning and defining relationships require prepositions and connections, and changes in verbs should maintain consistency with subject, tense and voice, etc. "The law in English is the task of specifying, clarifying and explaining the relationship between people, things, things and things." [8] Chinese (including classical Chinese) actually has grammatical rules, but it is much looser than Indo-European language . The words and sentences in Chinese classical poetry can also break through this loose grammar limitation and carry out "self-grammatical liberation" [9]. The loose grammatical rules make the words and lines of Chinese poetry have discrete characteristics, and are not so close in logic. Just like the relationship between the lines of poetry that emerged in the Book of Songs and the theme lines, there is no necessary logical connection between "the doves are singing in the river island" and "the beautiful lady is a good match for gentlemen". It seems that the "phonology" outside of the meaning connects them. The words and sentences of English poetry obviously need to pay attention to the connection between grammar and poetry and logical connection. Sonnets of Shakespeare are the product of typical English thinking. Their chapter structure is basically the same as English prose. For example, the beginning of "Sonnet18" (Sonnet18) introduces the main sentence from a question (Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?/Thou art more lovely and more temperature.), and then argue from two aspects anyway (how summer is not good, how "you" is better than summer), and finally make a final conclusion (So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this and this gives life to thee.). Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)'s To his Coy Mistress even uses the logical reasoning of "syllogism". The first verse of this poem makes a hypothesis: "If our world is big enough, time enough, Miss, you are not a sin." (Had we but world enough, and time./This coyness, Lady, were no crime.) The second verse uses "but" to make a turning point, "But behind me, I always hear the chariot with time wings flew hurriedly.” (But at my back I always hear/ Time’s wingèd chariot anxious near.) The last section uses “therefore” to conclude, “Now let us sport us while we May). Poems written in logical reasoning like this are rare in Chinese classical poetry. Chinese poetry is much looser and more casual in terms of chapter structure and poetic expression.
Flexible grammar allows ancient Chinese poets to splice and combine poems as they please, and even readers can participate in it, splicing verses that did not belong to the same poem and combine them into new text. For example, "A red apricot tree comes out of the wall, and thousands of pear blossoms bloom"; "The flow of flows down three thousand feet, no And Wang Lun sends me love", etc. These spliced lines of poetry were not first created by netizens today. The ancients called this kind of splicing "collected sentences", that is, select ready-made verses from different poems, and then cleverly compiled into new poems. Tang Xianzu 's " Peony Pavilion " has a total of 55 plays, and there are as many as 54 poems. For example, in the 52nd episode of "Suo Yuan", Wang's poem appeared on the stage: "What is the remaining orioles know about autumn, and they are sad every day and see the water flowing alone. So I went from Baxia to Wuxia , and mistakenly used Hangzhou as Bianzhou . ”[10] The first sentence is spliced from Li Yu 's " Qiu Ying ", the second sentence is spliced from Wang Changling's "Long Sui Tower", the third sentence is from Du Fu 's " Wen Guan Jun to Accept Henan and Hebei 's " Title Lin'an Di " by Lin Sheng . "This flexibility allows a free relationship between words and readers, and readers maintain a "close and distant" interpretation activity between words. ”[11] This is undoubtedly a major advantage of Chinese poetry. Indo-European poetry cannot have this narrative flexibility. However, the discreteness and flexibility of narratives in Chinese poetry often lead to imperfect logic and narrative omissions. However, the normalized thinking structure of Chinese culture often makes Chinese readers turn a blind eye to it, take it for granted, and take it for granted. Therefore, these defects will not be investigated in depth during the reading process, or these defects will not affect their reading and understanding. However, if we translate Chinese poetry into English, we will use the English thinking structure to retrieve the source text. Under the influence of the "other" thinking, some logical defects and narrative omissions in Chinese poetry are easier to identify. Below, this article uses " Nineteen Ancient Poems " as an example to explore how the translator's "other" thinking reflects classical poetry.
"Nineteen Ancient Poems" is a group of ancient poems created in the late Eastern Han Dynasty. The collection name comes from "Wenxuan" by Prince Zhaoming of Liang Dynasty Xiao Tong . He selected nineteen poems from the anonymous "Ancient Poems" circulated at that time into "Wenxuan" and named them. None of these nineteen poems have formal titles, and we are used to defining the first sentence of each poem as the title [12]. These nineteen poems are good at lyricism, Good at using things to set off, their artistic achievements have been extremely high. In the past two thousand years, they have been praised by literary theorists and poets. Southern Dynasty Literary theorists Liu Xie in his masterpiece " Wenxin Diaolong " called them "the crown of five-character" [13]. He said: "Looking at its structure prose, it is straight but not wild, it is graceful and attached to things, and it is sad and affectionate, which is actually the crown of five-character. " Zhong Rong 's " Poetry Collection " says: "The text is gentle and beautiful, the meaning is sad and far away, and the heart is thrilling. It can be said that it is almost a word of money. ”[14] Even contemporary poetic master Ye Jiaying said, “You cannot pick out which sentence or which word is the best, because the author’s feelings are concentrated in the whole poem, and it is a complete one. The whole poem is good, and you can’t pick up words and sentences at all. ”[15] In the eyes of poetic critics throughout the ages, these nineteen poems are perfect. Using a single "me" mindset, we may not be able to fully interpret and evaluate them, and naturally regard them as the best in five-character poems. This habitual lack of comprehensive understanding, "cannot relieve our self-inflation"[16]. These nineteen poems are undoubtedly extremely artistic achievements, so translators who like to translate Chinese classical poetry often choose or translate them in full.However, when I read their English translations, I found that the advantages of these nineteen poems are very obvious, but the defects also exist. This article mainly takes the translations of Wang Rongpei , J.P.Seaton, and D.Hinton as examples to look at these nineteen poems. Wang Rongpei's translation was selected as the "Greater Chinese Library"; Sidon and Hinton are famous contemporary American translators and sinologists, with profound attainments in Chinese classical poetry. Their translation is a reflection of the original work under the influence of cultural thinking, and have typical "other" thinking characteristics.
2. From the perspective of narrative grammar,
"Nineteen Ancient Poems"
As mentioned in the previous article, Chinese text lacks many "subdivided elements" in grammatical structure. The text of the poem shows the characteristics of blurred subject words, unclear tense, unclear word relationships, uncertain directions, and unclear chapter structure. These uncertainties have caused certain obstacles to translation. When translators translate Chinese and English, translators often need to clarify these uncertainties. For example, the first poem "Nineteen Ancient Poems" "Everything and Performing" by Ye Jiaying believes that it is a "good poem that is easy to understand but difficult to understand" [17]. The "difficult" point - the "difficult" point - is that there are various uncertainties in this poem. The first sentence "Everything is more important than doing" has no subject, nor a certain time and place, but the translator often needs to determine the subject and verb tense, so he gets into a dilemma: Should he be a traveler or a sending away as the subject? Did the action happen in the past or present? Is the action performer a man or a woman? Without the intervention of "other", we may not need answers to these questions. The second sentence "Diet from the Lord" is also an unorthodox sentence, but it explains the object of the second person "jun" ("jun" can also be defined as the third person), but it is still impossible to determine whether it is a traveler who is far away or a passerby who is "against you". The following two translations use two different perspectives. One is the words of the traveler (or the mistress at home) to the traveler, and the other is the words of the traveler to the traveler:
. On and on, alas, on and on!
Far away from me you will be gone! [18]
.On and on, and on and on again,
from you, my Lord, my love, I’m parted in this life.[19]
In terms of tense, when Wang's translation adopts the future, it seems that the traveler (you) and the narrator (me) are still together now, the traveler is about to travel, and the narrator is seeing off; when Sidon's translation adopts the present, it seems that the traveler has left. Next, "There are more than ten thousand miles apart, each one is at the end of the sky. The road is long and long, how can we know when we meet?" From the sad emotions when we parted, "I continue to write all the way, one sentence is far away, and one sentence is despair, from the increasingly distant distance that is gradually drifting away, to the sober cognition that blocks each other's side..." [20] Of course, we cannot clarify whether this paragraph is a narrative of a traveler or a narrative of a sending away. The last two lines of this poem, "Don't say again if you give up, try to add more meals" are also different explanations. "Abandon donation" does not explain the subject or the object. Who abandoned whom, or was it a person or something? "Don't say again" is "Don't say again" or "I won't say again"? Is " working hard to add rice to " "Is "I want you to have a good meal" (although I was abandoned, I still care for the other party) or "I want to have a good meal" (eat well, protect your body to treat gentlemen)? Chinese readers may not need to delve into these issues to understand the poem, but the translator does not, he must understand these uncertainties. The following two translations represent these two interpretations:
1.I can’t tell you how abandoned I feel,
but I’m eating well, building strength.[21]
.Do forget about it! Let it be!
I hope you’ll eat your fill and be carefulfree![22]
Siton translated these two lines of poetry as “And so my heart will say no more than this: try hard to stay well” [23], he ignored the word "abandoned" and blurred "who wants whoever wants to keep a good body". Although it is suspected of missing translation, it is also an explanation.The translator needs to clarify the various uncertainties of this poem from the standpoint of the "other" language thinking. However, when the translation clarifies these relationships, the translator can only translate a story with a clear relationship.
This poem, like many Chinese classical poems, omits subject or object, and cancels the preposition that points out the relationship between time and space, so that the narrative "there is no distinction between ancient and modern times, the earth is no distinction between north and south, people are no distinction between men and women, and things are no distinction between long journeys and farewells." [24] It only establishes a "basic" of narrative or lyrical [25]. The ultimate cleverness of this "basic" is that it can build many stories. All the unclear relationships in "Everything and Going" are allowed by readers to explain and build stories around this "basic form". Unfortunately, when translating it into English, the translator can only translate one of the stories in a "compromise" way, because the "segmentation factor" of the English language cannot generate many stories.
In addition, punctuation marks are even more uncertain in Chinese classical poetry, because ancient Chinese originally had punctuation marks. After some poems are added with special punctuation marks - such as quotes -, the grammatical structure is clear, and the narrative and lyricism appear more vivid. There are four lines of poems in " The cold air in the winter of the year ": "The guest came from a distance and left me a letter. The first one said long-lasting long-term love, and the next one said long-term separation." If you only use commas and periods to separate the lines of the poem, these four lines are just descriptive words. Sidon translated these four sentences as:
A traveler from afar has come
and brought a missive meant for me:
"I’ll forever think of you," it opened
and ended "long though we be parted."[26]
He translated the descriptive discourse into direct quotes, and the story narrated in the poem became vivid and interesting, bringing the readers closer to the story. It can be seen from this that with the help of the "other" thinking and through Western grammatical structure analysis, we can not only discover and understand the narrative "basic" in Chinese poetry, but also expand the space for poetry interpretation.
3. From the perspective of narrative logic,
"Nineteen Ancient Poems"
As the "Crown of Five Characters", "Nineteen Poems", is actually not that perfect. There are also some shortcomings in narrative logic, and some of the shortcomings are not easy to be discovered in the single "me" perspective. And these shortcomings are easily presented under the search for the "other" thinking. Although "logic" (transliteration of logic) is a foreign word, it does not mean that China has no logic since ancient times, but we call it "famous science". Chinese classical poetry actually pays attention to logical structure, and also has the concept of logical self-consistent "start, inherit, turn, and turn". However, Chinese poetry rarely uses logical techniques such as " syllogism ". Poets pay more attention to emotional analysis rather than rational reasoning. They often focus on implicitness and replace rational logic with "not saying it out loud" and "taking the way around Zen" [27]. In some poems, discrete connections of things and loose grammatical structures will cause the narrative contradictions before and after, the logical structure is unreasonable, and the inconsistency between the front and back.
Although " Long Astrology " is known as the best Chinese love poem, although its ending two sentences - "It's full of water, and it's hard to speak" - are extremely outstanding, but this poem makes a logical mistake, that is, inconsistency. At the beginning, this poem uses the word "double" to describe the distance between the Altar and the Vega (Hehan Girl), but the third to last sentence says "The Hehan and Han are clear and shallow, how many are the differences between them." The water of the Milky Way is clear and not deep, and the Morning Glory and the Weaver Girl are not far away. This is inconsistent with the "distance" at the beginning. Didn't it be said that they were very far apart? Why do we say here again "It's not far away"? They are only separated by two banks of the river and can look at each other. Perhaps we can use the explanation of "geographical distance" and "psychological distance" in modern literary criticism to start with a distant geographical distance, and end with a not distant psychological distance. It seems that this can transform contradictions, but this explanation may not be suitable for Chinese classical poetry.
Many translators may find that "how many are there" interpreted as "how far away can the morning glory and the Weaver Girl beside each other?" is contradictory to the "distance" at the beginning, so the description of the distance "how many are there" is ignored and not translated to avoid inconsistencies, such as Sidon's translation:
Afar, far off, the Herd Boy,
White, bright, the maiden by the River in the Sky.
⋯⋯
The River in the Sky is clear, and shallow,
yet how shall they ever cross, to meet again.[28]
The logical contradiction before and after also appears in the poem "Handle in the Courtyard of " if we follow the philology of "Handle in " that has been used in the past two thousand years. "There are strange trees in the courtyard, and the green leaves are blooming. Climbing the strips and breaking their glory, you will leave your thoughts with your thoughts. The fragrance fills your sleeves, and the road is far away. How precious is this thing? But when you feel the difference between the scriptures." This poem describes a woman's deep nostalgia for her husband who is traveling far away. From trees and leaves, from leaves and flowers, from flowers and picking, from picking and sending, from sending and thinking. The beginning of the poem says that there is a "strange tree" growing in the courtyard. According to the understanding of many scholars, "a strange tree is like a good tree", that is, "an extraordinary tree", is naturally rare. Zhu Ziqing believes that the "strange tree" comes from Cai Zhi's "Han Guan Dianzi": "The strange tree planted in the palace" is not an ordinary tree. However, the ending of this poem says "How precious is this thing" (the flowers growing on this tree are not precious), isn't this a contradiction? Wang Rongpei translated this poem as:
In the courtyard stands a tree so rare,
With leaves so green and flowers sweet and fair.
I pluck a flower from a twig above,
To offer as a token of my love.
In my laps and sleeps, sweet fragment stays.
But flowers will not reach him who’s far away.
Such a gift is not the worthy kind;
Long parting weights alone upon my mind.[29]
translates "Speech tree" as "a rare tree" and "He Zugui" as "not the worthy kind". Obviously, not only did not avoid this contradiction, but it also highlighted it more. Of course, Wang Rongpei's translation is based on the interpretation of "strange trees" in the past two thousand years. Is there any inconsistency in this poem? The author has consulted the explanation of the word "就" in "就文", one of which says "就氱文, one is "就氱氱". The "odd" here means "odd number", that is, "no even, no double". In the late Eastern Han Dynasty, "strange" already had the meaning of "uneven". "The Classic of Mountains and Seas·Overseas Western Classic" says: "In a country with strange arms, the person has one arm and three eyes, and has yin and yang." In this poem, if the "special tree" is interpreted as "the tree that is uneven, the tree that is lonely" can be compared to a mistress who is alone at home. Although she is married, her husband is traveling far away and leaving her alone to guard the empty room. Isn't this the same as "the tree that is uneven"? This tree in the courtyard is a lonely woman trapped in the boudoir.
can be seen that sometimes the above problems do not exist in the poems themselves, but due to the influence of solidified single thinking, especially guided by the "authoritative" interpretation from the beginning, the interpretation of some poems is biased. When we try to translate them into English, through the search of the "other" thinking, we can find that according to traditional interpretation, translation may have deviations in language understanding and logic.
"The Great Altair" still has the problem of unreasonable structure and insufficient response. The first two lines of this poem use the description of "double distance" and "biaojia", which leads to the two stars "Altius" and "Hehan Nu" (Vehicle Star), which are used to describe two lovers who love each other but cannot stay together. Unlike Shakespeare's "18th" who proposes contrasting at the beginning, and then expands the balance between these two sides to express emotions, this poem starts from the third sentence to describe the longing of "Vei Girl" for " Altitus ", without a single sentence of "Altitus" describing "Altitus" alone. This lyrical description does not correspond to the first two sentences, causing an unbalanced psychological response.Let's read Hinton's translation again, and this feeling of imbalance is particularly obvious:
Far, far off the Ox-Herd star drifts.
And the Star River’s radiant lady—
she weaves shadow-and-light finery,
her shuttle whispering, whispering
all day long. She’s never finished.
Her tears fall, scattering like rain.
Star River’s a crytalline shallows,
so thin keeping them apart, a mere.
wisp of water brimming, brimming.
They gaze and gaze, and say nothing.[30]
Read this translation, readers will feel that the first sentence is abrupt. It neither serves as the theme of the whole poem nor leads to the following lines. Of course, this is not a matter of translation, but the original poem lacks reasonable and balanced narrative lyricism. The same problem exists in " Qingqinglingling and Baibai ". The poet passed by a grave in Beimang Mountain in Luoyang and saw the hills covered with green cypress trees. He thought of the person lying in the grave, and then thought of the short life, like a white horse passing by in an instant. "Life in the world is like a traveler who travels far away." Since life is so short, we should live happily, abandon our worries and live with quality. Since ancient times, wine has been an important tool to improve the quotient of happiness. The poet advises friends to drink a cup of wine and entertain each other, and not to care about the amount and thickness of the wine. "Driving a slow horse, the game is like Luo." Let's drive a slow horse to Nanyang City and Luoyang City to play, so that we can temporarily eliminate inner depression and make people forget their worries; traveling can feel the happiness of the outside world and make our body and mind happy. However, the second half of this poem does not mention Nanyang, only Luoyang . "How gloomy in Luoyang, the crowns and belts are connected by themselves." The poet depicts the prosperous scene of Luoyang, as well as the "King and Prince's House" with many palaces and temples, carved beams and embroidered columns, and painted buildings. Finally, he used "The feast to entertain the hearts, why should we be forced to enjoy our hearts?" (Let us enjoy this luxurious feast to make our hearts happy. What does it force me to be happy?) However, the "Nanyang City" mentioned in the aforementioned article does not mention a word in the second half, and does not respond to the previous article, which will inevitably make readers feel disturbed.
After searching the "other" thinking, we found that "Nineteen Ancient Poems" as the "Crown of Five Characters" has many other problems. For example, the four sentences at the beginning of " Bright Moon and Night Light " "The bright Moon and Night Light are singing in the east wall. Yuheng refers to Bright Moon and Night Light , how can the stars be vivid?" These four sentences describe natural landscapes, sometimes written in the sky, sometimes written in the ground, sometimes jumping to the sky, and sometimes falling to the ground, making the narrative disordered and a little confused. Some poems have different themes before and after, such as " East City is tall and long" does not look like a poem, but two poems with different themes. There are also some poems that describe life ambitions and different states. The first part of " Today's Good Banquet " originally expressed the confusion and depression of life frustration or unsuccessfulness, but was written with great enthusiasm; the theme of the latter part changed, turning into the lament of impermanence of life, and asked readers to quickly seek a high position to occupy the key points.
translation activity process is often a comprehensive process of the translator's "self" and "other" thinking. The translator will consciously or unconsciously interpret the text "to convert it into an interculturality problem, that is, how to form mutual understanding between cultures, improve each individual's ability to transcend itself and interact with other cultures, and thus build a complete self-awareness. To achieve this, you can only 'start from the other', suspend your own preferences, so as to see the others, hear the others, and then understand the others, and construct a multi-dimensional perspective of culture" [31]. China is a great country in poetry, and the practice of poetry exegesis has a history of more than two thousand years, but we cannot be closed to our own theories and methods. We must integrate with the world and let the cultural thinking of "other" intervene. "The single perspective of Chinese culture has limitations. This is because we agree with the proposition that Chinese literature (culture) foreign translation is a cross-cultural behavior.The cross-cultural transformation of texts only from one perspective does not match the cross-cultural attributes of this behavior, and the analysis of this behavior needs to go beyond a single self-cultural perspective. ” [32] Precisely because the "other" thinking can provide a new perspective on text interpretation, break through the prejudice, limitations, and invisible blind spots formed by the single "self" cultural thinking, so as to a certain extent, it can correct the deviations of traditional interpretation, and even add to its shortcomings. The interpretation of Chinese poetry should be injected into the other in the self-view, and find itself in the mirror image of the others. This can not only expand the interpretation space of Chinese poetry and overcome the limitations of single self-cultural thinking, but also help to seek more reasonable and vivid translations, which is beneficial to the Chinese poetry culture going to the world and integrating into the community of world literature.
comments
[1] Zhou Xuanfeng: "Research on Power Politics in Translation of Cultural "Other"", "Foreign Language Teaching" 2014 No. 6 Issue.
[2] Li Zehou: "Four Lectures on Aesthetics", Hefei: Anhui Literature and Art Press, 1999 edition, page 536.
[3][6][16] [German] Gu Bin: "Only Chinese people understand China"?", Reading, Issue 7, 2006.
[4] Zhou Xuanfeng: "Translation of Cultural "Other": The Inspiration of the Thinking of the "Other" in Postmodern Philosophy", Journal of Hunan University of Science and Technology (Social Science Edition) 2012 No. 7.
[5][31] Dan Wa: "Basic Theoretical Propositions of Cross-Cultural Communication", Journal of Central China Normal University (Humanities and Social Science Edition) 2011 No. 1 Issue.
[7][8][9][Ye Weilian: "Chinese Poetics", Beijing: People's Literature Publishing House, 2006 edition, page 15.
[10] [Ming Dynasty] Tang Xianzu: "Peony Pavilion", Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2000 edition, page 688.
[11] Ye Weilian: "Chinese Poetics", Beijing: People's Literature Publishing House, 2006 edition, page 16 Page.
[12] "Nineteen Ancient Poems" appeared in "Selected Works of Zhaoming" as one after another: "Running Walks", "Green Grass by the River", "Cypress on the Green Tomb", "Today's Good Banquet", "There are tall buildings in the northwest", "Picking lotus in the river", "Bright Moon Bright Night Light", "Single Bamboos in the Courtyard", "There are strange trees in the courtyard", "The Return of the Carriage", "The East City is High and Long", "Driving to the East Gate", "Driving to the East Gate", "The Year of Birth", "The Year of Birth is Less than a Hundred", "The Year of Birth", "The Cold Air in the Winter", "Comecoming from Afar" and "How Bright Moon is Bright".
[13] [Southern Dynasty] Liu Xie: "Wenxin Diaolong", Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 2014 edition, No. 58 Page.
[14] Xu Wenyu: "Zhong Rong's Poetry Notes", Chengdu: Chengdu Ancient Books Store, 1996 edition, page 30.
[15] Ye Jiaying: "Records of Poetry in the Han, Wei and Six Dynasties", Shijiazhuang: Hebei Education Press, 1997 edition, page 59.
[17][20][24] Ye Jiaying: "Jialing Talks on Poetry", Beijing: Sanlian Books Store, 2016 edition, page 20-44, 32, 28.
[18][22] Wang Rongpei: "Three Hundred Poems in the Han, Wei and Six Dynasties", Changsha: Hunan People's Publishing House, 2006 edition, page 51.
[19][23] J. P. Seaton. The Shambhala Anthology of Chinese Poetry (Boston: Shambhala Publications Inc. 2006), 54.
[21]D. Hinton. Classical Chinese Poetry, An Anthology (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), 105.
[25] "Basic" is a concept proposed by Ye Jiaying when she explored the narrative method of "Everything and Repeat" in her book "Jialing Talks about Poems", but she did not give a definition in the book. According to the context, this word refers to the author creating a "meta story", allowing readers to shuttle between this "meta story" and use their own understanding to splice and combine stories. A story-based model can generate multiple or even countless stories. The wonder of Chinese classical poetry is that poets can use the advantages of Chinese to build a story-based model, and this basic model is full of emotions.
[26][27]J. P. Seaton. The Shambhala Anthology of Chinese Poetry (Boston: Shambhala Publications Inc. 2006), 58, 56.
[28] Jiang Yin: "Modern Interpretation of Classical Poetics", Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 2003 edition, pages 85-89.
[29] Wang Rongpei: "Three Hundred Poems in the Han, Wei and Six Dynasties", Changsha: Hunan People's Publishing House, 2006 edition, page 61.
[30]D. Hinton. Classical Chinese Poetry, An Anthology (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), 105-106
[32]Lu Shisheng, Yuan Fang: "Other Culture Perspective of Chinese Classical Drama Translation - Taking the "Essence of Drama" by Sinologists Alindon and Eckton as an Example", "International Sinology" 2017 No. 4.
[30]D. Hinton. Classical Chinese Poetry, An Anthology (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), 105-106
[32]Lu Shisheng, Yuan Fang: "Other Culture Perspective of Chinese Classical Drama Translation - Taking the "Essence of Drama" by Sinologists Alindon and Eckton as an Example", "International Sinology" 2017 No. 4.
