Intertextuality in Translating Romantic Folksong Hua’er Across Time and Space with English Love Poems

Ma Rui

doi:10.7575/aiac.ijclts.v.9n.3p.32

Abstract

Hua’er, a peculiar type of folk song in Northwest China, can be translated by referring to English love poems to recreate analogous but fundamentally different intertextual relations in English. The intertextuality perspective of translation enables the translator to see the rendition not as a product but as one of the numerous interpretive possibilities. Seen in this light, translating romantic Hua’er is able to open up one of many dialogues with English language and culture. By analyzing pieces of romantic Hua’er which the author translated, this paper aims to explore ways of representing the original intertextual relations in the English cultural context through three specific situations where the intertexts within Hua’er are recreated in the receiving language. The three ways are reproducing by substitution for intertexts likely to remain unrecognized in English, retaining intertexts with distinctive Chinese characteristics and constructing intertexts in a new context familiar to English readers.

Highlights

Hua’er, a peculiar type of folk song indigenous to the remote mountain areas of Northwest China, has remained relatively less popular and less renowned outside of China
With Chinese classic poems serving as stepping stone and by referring to English love poems for analogous texts, the translator is able to construct intertexual relations within the renderings of romantic Hua’er
Through first-hand translation practice this study finds that: (1) those multiple intertexts contained in romantic Hua’er can be reproduced by substitution with similar ones in English, though the general local rural atmosphere is mostly lost in favor of familiar English cultural backdrop; (2) In spite of this loss, the translator should always watch out for any possibilities of retaining those intertexts with distinctive Chinese characteristics

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Hua’er, a peculiar type of folk song indigenous to the remote mountain areas of Northwest China, has remained relatively less popular and less renowned outside of China. Perhaps the most favorable result the concept of intertextuality brought up in translation studies is acknowledging the role of both the translators and the readers of receiving language as active agent of interpretation As they incorporate their own cultural backgrounds, previous reading experience and knowledge structure into the reading process, it follows that multiple renderings of the same text should be expected, which undermines further the traditional idea of equivalence The theme of P3 is the familiar “carpe diem”, which a Chinese reader should have no difficulty recalling the famous poem “jin lv yi” of Tang Dynasty.4But the entire context is built upon the local rural life of Northwest China Close renderings of these specific images will only widen the gap between Hua’er and English culture. The underlined part of T4 is related to the poem “On Monsieur’s Departure” by Queen Elizabeth where she expresses her yearning for a man in an undisguised manner that is virtually unthinkable in Chinese traditional culture. The intertextual property is obviously not the same as that in P4, the rendering is more likely to activate more interpretive possibilities in the receiving situation and open endless connections to other texts (Table 4)

CONCLUSION

Findings

The most directly related lines in Edmund Spenser’s “Fresh Spring” are