As the linguistics develops, it seems that humans are not satisfied with the communication any longer; they also try to work on translating some literary things such as poems.
As we all know, Chinese poems are the soul of Chinese culture and Chinese literature and they are the pick of this kind of language. In the translation, translators should not only keep the characteristics, but also make them be concretely interpreted in English. Therefore, it is quite difficult for people to translate Chinese poems into English ones. Firstly, Chinese poems have very strict rhythm and the number of words in each sentence is fixed. However, English is a unique language with the special grammar. So it is quite difficult to keep the rhythm during the translation. Secondly, the ways that Chinese think generally compared with English are completely different. English are used to describe simple things which are easy for others to understand while Chinese are used to describe abstract thing and they often imply their emotions among the words and sentences. Thus, directly translating Chinese poems into English may be difficult for foreigners to understand. Thirdly, in order to use fewer words to express deep meanings, omitting the subjects is very common in Chinese poems. But subjects are very important element in English. So choosing a proper subject is also very important.
From my perspective, translating Chinese poems into English poems is very difficult; however, we can have a better understanding of these two languages through it. We should follow the English rules as well as keep the soul of Chinese poems. I believe a good translation of a Chinese poem can promote the prevalence of Chinese culture.
It's really hard to translate Chinese poems to English and even it is done, the beauty of the original poem has gone half. Because the language and literature are tightly related and they are both important components of a culture, placing them under another culture always makes no sense even they are classics.So if a foreigner wants to know Chinese poem, he should learn the language and culture first.
ReplyDeleteWhile it is difficult to translate poetry from one language to another, the effort should be continued so that speakers of other language can appreciate the meaning behind the poem. However, the aim should be translating for meaning and not based on the language structure.
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