Chapter One Literature Review
1.1 The Brief Introduction of English Versions of The Peony Pavilion
With the development and transmission of Chinese culture, The Peony Pavilion has been translated into foreign languages, for it has an important position in the history of Chinese classical drama. Since H. Acton selected and translated The Peony Pavilion in 1939, this drama has begun to arouse the interest of foreign readers and scholars. Afterwards, Cyril Birch translated the whole drama and published it in 1980. H. C. Chang and Stephen Owen selected some parts of The Peony Pavilion to translate. In China those who translated or adapted this drama include Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang, Zhang Guangqian, Chen Meilin, Xu Yuanchong, and Wang Rongpei. Up to now, there are 23 different English versions of The Peony Pavilion (丁水芳, 杜泉贵 40). Those English versions can help Chinese culture spread abroad and foster cross-cultural communication. As Wang Rongpei mentioned in The Peony pavilion—Its English Translation and Propagation, The Peony Pavilion is good enough to be on a spar with William Shakespeare’s Rome and Juliet, and he also pointed out the translators, as pioneers of cross-cultural communication, have made a great contribution to the translation of this drama so the translators’ achievements can’t be ignored (48). Therefore, making a study on the translations of The Peonymetaphor, and metonymy, and analyzes how the translator groups the linguistic elements which share similar characteristics into a whole meaning in terms of the principle of similarity. Thirdly, the author discusses the translation process of personification, repetition, and pun, and analyzes how the translator supplements the semantic blanks of the original text in terms of the principle of closure. Fourthly, the author discusses the translation process of duality, parallelism, and rhetorical question, and analyzes how the translator strengthens the logicality and coherence in terms of the principle of continuity. The author also gives two typical examples to each rhetorical device, making the analysis of the rhetoric translation specific and convincing.
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1.2 Researches on the Translation of The Peony Pavilion
Since the beginning of the 21st century, especially after Wang Rongpei’s translation of The Peony Pavilion published, the research on the translation of The Peony Pavilion has gradually become a hot topic. In recent years, the number of the research on the Wang Rongpei’s translation of The Peony Pavilion is increasing obviously. After 2005, the research theme has gradually become richer, and Wang Rongpei’s translation strategies, translation ideas, translation process, and translation style have all begun to be deeply studied (刘锦晖，王密卿 23). Some scholars have made research on this topic from different perspectives. This thesis discusses the translation research of The Peony Pavilion in terms of several aspects, such as the study on a single English version, the comparative study between two or among multiple English versions, the research from different translation theories, translation strategies or techniques, and cultural translation.
First of all, there are some studies on a single English version of The Peony Pavilion. For example, Wang Xin (2013) discussed the feasibility of using hermeneutics in Chinese opera after analyzing The Peony Pavilion on the basis of four hermeneutic translation stages. Tang Yixin (2017) made a research on Culture-loaded words translation in Xu Yuanchong’s Edition of Dream in Peony Pavilion from the perspective of Interpretive theory. These studies often pay attention to a single translation, so they can deeply analyze the translation theories, strategies and techniques in the translation process.
Secondly, there are some comparative studies on the translation of The Peony Pavilion. Huang Ying (2011) made a study of the two translations of The peony Pavilion by Birch and Wang Rongpei from the perspective of language and culture on the basis of defamiliarization theory. Jiang Linyuan (2012) made a research on analyzing the strategies of the translators in the transformations of language, culture and communication through the comparative study of the three English versions by Cyril Birch, Zhang Guangqian and Wang Rongpei.
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Chapter Two Theoretical Framework
2.1 The Explanation of Gestalt Theory
The term “gestalt” was originally put forward in the essay “On Gestalt Qualities” in 1980 by Wertheimer’s teacher, Christian von Ehrenfels, who was a philosopher and psychologist. In “On Gestalt Qualities”, Ehrenfels developed Ernst Mach’s form-quality theory. Moreover, “Gestalt” is a German word, which has two meanings. Firstly, it refers to shape or form, namely the quality of the object. Secondly, it means a concrete entity, which has the characteristic of having a particular form or shape. It is not a special form, but refers to the object itself. Form is only one of the attributes of an object. That is to say, “Gestalt” is any isolated whole. Thus, “gestalt” is not translated into “structure”, but “configuration”. In Gestalt psychology, “Gestalt” means “form is generated from the sensation”, which describes the phenomenon that a complete schema is composed of its parts, and consequently the most important theoretical cornerstone of Gestalt psychology is that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts (鲁枢元 81). Obviously, the quality of these parts depends on the whole, and the problem that Gestalt theory deals with is the relationship between the wholeand the parts.
Gestalt theory points that “the world is a sensible coherent whole, that reality is organized into meaningful parts, and that natural units have their own structure” (King et al. 910). When people recognize the world, they perceive the world as a sensible coherent whole instead of meaningful parts during cognitive process of the people. Besides, Gestalt theory originates from the analysis of a variety of phenomena in the field of visual perception. Koffka proposed the Gestalt view of perception in his paper “Perception: an Introduction to Gestalt Theory” in 1922, indicating that perception has the integrity which cannot be found in any part. That is, perception cannot be interpreted as the collection of sensory elements or simply the sum of its parts. In conclusion, the whole is not simple combination of every part; the quality of the whole decides the quality of the part, and the quality of the part lies in its relation, location and function in the whole.
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2.2 The Development of Gestalt Theory
Gestalt theory comes into being due to many factors including the special social and historical conditions, as well as the backgrounds of the science, philosophy, and psychology at that time. With the rise of the German Empire in the late19th and early 20th centuries, the concepts of “unity of will” and the research on “integrity” extended to all aspects of social life. And during this period, because of the further development of the concepts of “field” and “field theory”, physical sciences abandoned the idea of mechanism, which greatly influenced Gestalt psychologists. In the domain of philosophy, Immanuel Kant’s apriorism, Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, and Ernst Mach’s empirical philosophy had a profound impact on Gestalt psychology. Some ideas were put forward by other philosophers such as Alfred North Whitehead and Thomas Hunt Morgan. They also influenced the Gestalt psychology. Additionally, some psychologists had an enormous impact on Gestalt psychology. For example, Franz Brentano is the founder of act psychology and thinks that psychological phenomenon is holistic, and Carl Stumpf holds that mentalfunction has an important feature of integrity, which significantly influences the “holism” of Gestalt psychology (王鹏等 26-29). Christian Von Ehrenfels is the founder of the form-quality school which has a direct influence on Gestalt psychology. The famous representatives of Gestalt psychology are three German psychologists, including Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler, and Kurt Koffka. They conducted the experiment study of the perception, and the experiment of “apparent movement” which becomes the starting point of Gestalt psychology. It is generally recognized that Wertheimer is the main founder of Gestalt school, while Wolfgang Kohler and Kurt Koffka made a great contribution to the inheritance and development of Gestalt theory.
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Chapter Three Rhetorical Devices of The Peony Pavilion ............................. 21
3.1 The Explanation of the Rhetoric ................................. 21
3.2 The Function of the Rhetoric ................................ 22
3.3 Rhetorical Devices Used in The Peony Pavilion ...................... 23
Chapter Four The Application of Gestalt Theory to Wang Rongpei’s Translation ...... 37
4.1 The Application of the Principle of Proximity .................................... 38
4.1.1 Allusion ................................... 39
4.1.2 Hyperbole ........................... 42
Chapter Four The Application of Gestalt Theory to Wang Rongpei’s Translation
4.1 The Application of the Principle of Proximity
The principle of proximity indicates that the things that are close together are more likely to be seen as a whole, because those isolated elements are not stable and difficult to be recognized, remembered and used by people. It is obvious that the psychological mechanism has a great influence on people’s cognitive process and aesthetic tendency. Secondarily, every linguistic element has its own meaning, but the whole meaning of the source text is based on the integration of these linguistic elements, which indicates the translator’s overall aesthetic experience of the source text. The whole meaning is more than the simple sum of the linguistic elements, but an integrated meaning produced by the translator. This is conducive to the effective transmission of an integrated rhetorical meaning. Thus, during the process of translation, the translator has a psychological tendency to perceive those discrete but correlated linguistic elements as an integrated meaning, in order to form an integrated meaning and make the sentence structure more stable. Besides, when the linguistic elements of the source text are arranged into a whole, the target text will be easier forthe target readers to understand and remembered. As for rhetoric translation, the rhetorical devices contain many linguistic elements in the text, which should be analyzed in the context and the author should grasp the integrated meaning of these linguistic elements. Then the structure of the target text can be more stable and cohesive, and then the language can be concise.
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Conclusion
In this thesis, the author makes a study on the rhetoric translation from the perspective of Gestalt theory, developing a more comprehensive view on the rhetoric translation. By analyzing the translation process of the rhetorical devices, the author believes that the psychological process of the translator can play an important role in the translation process of these rhetorical devices, and the principles of proximity, similarity, closure and continuity are conducive to the improvement of translation quality.
The translation of rhetorical devices is difficult for translators, especially The Peony Pavilion which is a masterpiece with excellent language skills. The rhetorical meaning cannot be isolated from the overall context. The translator needs to grasp the relationship between the overall context and rhetorical meaning, which helps the translator form an organic whole in their mind. Besides, from the author’s point of view, with the employment of Gestalt theory, the translator can better deal with the rhetorical meaning in accordance with the overall context, and then the effective transmission of the rhetorical meaning can be realized in the target text. In addition, the psychological process of the translator can be reflected in the translation process of the rhetorical devices. Furthermore, the core idea of the Gestalt principle is that the people have a psychological tendency to perceive the elements as a whole, for the whole is easier to be recognized, remembered and used during people’s cognitive process. Consequently, the author suggests that the four principles of proximity, similarity, closure, and continuity from the Gestalt theory is significant to be applied to the analysis of the rhetoric translation of The Peony Pavilion, which can display Wang Rongpei’s psychological tendency during his translation process and provide certain reference for further studies of the rhetoric translation.
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