A Study on Translation Strategies of Image in The Book of SongsThe Book of Songs, Translation Strategy, Image, Comparative Study

Abstract

The Book of Songs is one of the earliest collection of poetry in China. It is also one of the earliest collection of poetry in the world which has great influence in the history of Chinese literature and in the history of world literature. There are a lot of cultural images in The Book of Songs, which adds vividness and artistry to poetry. The quality of image translation is closely related to the overall quality and artistic effect of The Book of Songs. The abstractness and complexity of cultural images bring great challenges to translators. And it is a subject worthy of further discussion. In the image translation of The Book of Songs, there are intralingual differences between ancient Chinese and modern Chinese, and the interlingual differences between Chinese culture and English culture. How to correctly understand the images in the original poem and make the target readers understand the image the original poem is intended to express is still a difficult problem. The translations produced by translators have a direct impact on whether Chinese culture can be actively spread. This paper takes three English versions of The Book of Songs respectively by James Legge, Xu Yuanchong and Wang Rongpei as examples for a case study. By comparing the three translators’ translation strategies in dealing with images in The Book of Song, it points out that in translating the images, they applied various translation strategies, for the intralingual and interlingual differences which lead to the difficulty of understanding. It makes a comparative study that serves to understand the image translation strategies by different translators, and also provides new ideas for poetry image translation in the future.