Translating Ancient Chinese Poems by Applying Interpretive Translation

Abstract

This article is about a Chinese-English translation. The original text is written by one of Four Literary Eminences in the Early Tang Dynasty, Wang Bo. The purpose of this report is to discuss translating traditional Chinese poems by using interpretive translation and lay out the problems and solutions in the process of translation. Translation of the text was carried out in the following steps: intensive reading, consultation of related materials, preliminary translation, revision, finalization of the translation and writing the translation report. The narrative logic was made clear by intensive reading and the cultural confusions were resolved by referring to related materials. The whole translation is guided by the principles of faithfulness and smoothness as well as the methods of literal translation and free translation. On the completion, the version was revised and polished again and again before it is finalized. This article is mainly made up of the following parts: part one gives a brief introduction to the translation practice, including source of the text, significance and report structures; part two, practice description primarily introduces the source text, its writer, main contents and analysis; part three, translation process, including pre-translation preparation, expression stage and proofreading; the case study of the fourth part includes lexical and syntactical analysis as well as cultural key points; in the fifth part, conclusion summarizes what the translator experiences and learns through the whole process. Case analysis, the core of the article, shows in detail the difficulties, solutions and translation ideas in the translation. This article helps the translator find out her shortcomings in translation and provides suggestions for the improvement of her translation skills. More importantly, it makes the translator to realize more clearly that both Chinese and English matter for translators. Hopefully, peer translators or no matter who reads this can benefit from the article.