本文是一篇英语论文，本次翻译实践尝试将其译作中国古体诗，探索其文内文外意义的同时，尝试证明以中国古体诗翻译英美现代诗歌的可能性与可行性。
Chapter One Task Description and Procedures
1.1 Background of the Translation Task
英语论文参考
2022 marks the 104th anniversary of the end of the First World War (WWI), during which 150 thousand Chinese laborers went to Europe in support of the Allies and 20 thousand of them never returned. During and after the war, there are many significant war literary works (e.g., fiction, poems) portraying the real situation of the war, which emphasizes the value they protect and indicates their true feeling for the war and the passion for freedom and peace. The remarkable works include In Flanders Fields (John McCrae, 1915), The Red Flower Poems: Poems Written in War Time (Henry van Dyke, 1917), A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway, 1929), Die Welt von Gestern: Erinnerungeneines Europäer (Stefan Zweigs, 1941), Testament of Youth (Vera Brittain,1943), The Path to the Peace (Siegfried Sassoon,1960).
Among the works mentioned above, The Red Flower Poems: Poems Written in War Time (hereinafter referred to the Red Flower Poems) is of unique significance since its author, Henry van Dyke, was the United States Ambassador to Luxembourg and Netherlands from 1913 to 1917, representing the stance of United States before its official interfere into the war in 1917. Besides his status as a diplomat, he also served as a professor of English literature at Princeton University. His literary talent was not overshadowed by the war. In contrast, he persisted in composing poems even during the most critical time of the war. After he returned to the U.S., he published 21 poems written during his tenure as the minister in 1917, namely The Red Flower Poems: Poems Written in War Time, which, in his romantic poetic language, expressed his belief and status in the Great War. This anthology has been chosen as the object of this translation practice, for its historic value as the record of the Great War, and its aesthetic value as the collection under the influence of romanticism and imagism.
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1.2 Procedures
This section will thoroughly introduce the procedure from the perspective of pre-translation, mid-translation and post-translation, which is based on the real situation of this translation project.
1.2.1 Pre-translation
What is translated is not the sender’s intention but the translator’s interpretation of the sender’s intention (Nord, 2001:85). Therefore, a proper understanding of the poetry is necessary for the project. To translate the poem properly, one needs to understand the poems, which consists of 2 parts: extra-textual level (background and author, social context, historical background, etc.) and textual level (including word choices, sentences and rhymes). Since the intra-textual analysis mainly includes the analysis of the features, which have been analyzed in the following chapters, this section will only focus on the extra-textual part.
Before the translation was conducted, the author managed to master van Dyke’s views (literary and political) and experience during WWI. Henry van Dyke (1852~1933) is a versatile figure, whose careers cover poetry, religion, literature, education, sports, and diplomacy. In his life, he published many different works, including sermons, biblical and doctrinal treatises, stories and novels, poems, essays and literary miscellanies, covering a wide range of thought and life (including Days Off and Other Digressions published in 1907 as the collection of short stories, and The Book of Common Worship published in 1906 as the first liturgical book of the Presbyterian Church in the United States). His versatile life enables him to integrate his works with his faith as a Presbyterian preacher and his love towards nature, to make a “heaven and nature song” (Kerr, H. T., 1988:294), which are 2 main themes of his works.
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Chapter Two Analysis on the Source Text
2.1 Introduction to the Source Text
The Red Flower: Poems Written in War Time collects 21 war-related verses from 1914-1917, covering most time of WWI. This collection represents 2 main features of American poetry during WWI: idealism and romanticism, which are consistent with the environment at his time.
During the early stage of the 20th century, the war was considered to be a grand and glorious issue. Such recognition played an important role in the war literature during World War I (Lundberg, 1984:376). Different from the depressed and outraged tense in Britain and France, the theme of most American literature was to support and justify the American involvement in the great war. (Lundberg, 1984:378). Such idealism fueled patriotism that gave rise to many rarely-known poets, including Henry van Dyke (Buitenhuis, 1985: 85), whose poetry during wartime was encouraging and inspiring.
Different from British literature with disillusionment and despair as the theme, such outpouring and passion were kept in American literature. There are 2 main reasons. Firstly, the idealism was largely motivated by British and French war propaganda, which aimed to bring the U.S. into the war as soon as possible; second, the main battle was far away from the mainland of the U.S. and even after the U.S. joined in the war, the Americans were mainly sent away from the frontlines. Poets, even those war poets, were not the soldiers on the frontline, but the officers and doctors away from the battles (Lundberg, 1984:378).
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2.2 Features of the Source Texts
Van Dyke’s poetry illustrates 4 main features: idealism and romanticism, appealing content, religious words and freedom of the forms.
The early American literature during WWI was usually idealistic and romantic (Buitenhuis, 1985: 80). Van Dyke is not an exception. He stood for the American involvement in the Great War and strongly believed that the War was a noble and righteous undertaking against the brutal war machine of the German Reich. He described the war in an extremely idealistic way, which is a war for freedom from “a tyrant’s chain” and “dishonor’s stain” (Van Dyke, 1917:13). To achieve such ideas, “we’ll pay the price of war to make it real” (Van Dyke, 1917:17). And the romantic tone is also an outstanding feature in his poetry. For example, in The Red Flower (1917:3), in the last 2 stanzas, he described an illusion (“a certain field”), in which there were “devil” (referred to as the German Army, undoubtedly), and “flaring splotch of red” (referred to the fires in the battleground), and which he described as “an evil omen, a bloody sign/ and a token of many dead”. In this poem, the bloody red flower was chosen as the last but most important image, by which he tended to describe the brutality of the war. Such a romantic manner is common in this collection.
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Chapter Three Difficulties and Solutions ................................ 14
3.1 Translation of Culture- specific Items ........................................ 14
3.1.1 Localization................................... 14
3.1.2 Conversion ................................. 17
Conclusion .......................... 42
Chapter Three Difficulties and Solutions
3.1 Translation of Culture- specific Items
英语论文怎么写
Images are the core of poetry, which are deeply rooted in its culture. The readers are impressed by the images by their meaning and metaphor. Reader’s reaction and understanding are determined by the specific association between words and the contexts, which can be influenced by personal experience, and social & cultural background (Liu, 2003:55). The implication of the word entangles the translator in the web of intertextual relations and interrelated meanings (Gentzler, 1993:2). Therefore, it’s nearly impossible to reach the goal of poetic equivalence by the literal translation of the images (especially the cultural-specific items) into the language of the different social and cultural context. To reconstruct the poetry and meet the expectation of the readers in the target language, rewriting of the cultural-specific items is necessary. However, the rewriting doesn’t equal the random changes. Instead, for the cultural-specific items, the cultural meaning behind the words must be maintained. In conclusion, the translation of the images determines whether the poetry can be understood properly, while the rewriting of the images determines whether the poetry can be reconstructed properly (in terms of poetics and aesthetics). This chapter offers 3 solutions to rewrite the cultural-specific items, while maintaining their cultural meaning, which are localization, conversion and annotation.
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Conclusion
In this project, Henry van Dyke’s The Red Flower: Poems written in War Time and his other 10 verses (32 in total) have been translated into unregulated verses. During the translation, the inter- and intra-textual value of Henry van Dyke’s poetry has been studied and the possibility and practicality of the translation between classical Chinese poetry and Modern English poetry have been explored.
As the American ambassador during World War I, his poetry indicates the mainstream ideas, including the support for the Allied Power and resistance against the invasion, the support for democracy and the resistance against the British dominance. On the intra-textual level, his poetry demonstrates the poetic betrayal against the mawkish style of the poetry, and an insistence on freedom of forms. Moreover, his integration of literary works with natural images also indicates the uprising trend of imagism in America.
In terms of the translation. the translation between classical Chinese poetry and Modern English poetry has been proven possible and available in this project. In terms of cultural-specific items, the application of rarely-used translation can be used to replace the items that are accepted into modern poetry; the addition of the images that the readers in the target language are familiar with can enhance the reading experience; annotation can be the last guarantee for the information of the verses. As for the structure, the flexibility of the unregulated verse can allow the rewriting according to the features of the source texts. As for the rhyme, the unregulated verses can also meet the requirements of the changes for multiple purposes, including vocal, structural and aesthetic purposes.
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