论文总字数：54738字

摘 要

List of Tables iv

Chapter 1 Introduction 1

1.1 Research Background 1

1.2 Objectives and Significance of the Research 2

1.3 Organization of the Thesis 2

Chapter 2. Literature Review 3

2.1 Previous Studies on Eco-translatology 3

2.1.1 The Development of Eco-translatology 3

2.1.2 Applied Studies of Eco-translatology 4

2.2 Previous Studies on the English Translation of The Everlasting Regret Song 5

Chapter 3 Data and Methodology 7

3.1 Translators and Different English Version of The Everlasting Regret Song 7

3.2 Rhetorical Devices used in The Everlasting Regret Song 8

Chapter 4. Comparative Study on the Rhetorical Translation of The Everlasting Regret Song

from the Perspective of Eco-translatology. 11

4.1 Three-dimensional Transformations 11

4.1.1 Linguistic-dimensional Transformation 11

4.1.2 Cultural-dimensional Transformation 14

4.1.3 Communicative-dimensional Transformation 20

4.2 Translator-centeredness 22

Chapter 5 Conclusion 24

5.1 Major Findings 24

5.2 Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research 25

References 26

Acknowledgments

I really want to thank those who have helped and supported me when I was writing this thesis from my heart.

First, I would love to give my heartfelt gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Xiang Mingjian, who has offered me constant guidance whether from the beginning of the topic selection or in the process of data collection. His professional knowledge, rigorous academic attitude, excelsior work style, strict self-discipline and easy-going personality charm has far-reaching impact on me. Dr. Xiang has given me precious instructions in my studies as well as positive influence on my thought and life.

Next, my gratitude should be given to the teachers in the School of Foreign Languages and Literature in Nanjing Tech University. They have shared their academic knowledge, broaden horizon and profound thinking with us, which creates a great academic atmosphere for me, so that my paper could be more rigorous.

Then, I feel like giving my appreciation to my friends accompanying me when I was confronted with barriers in both thesis and life. I enjoy communicating with them and without their help, I couldn't successfully solve all kinds of difficulties in life.

Last but not least, I would like to express my profound love to my family, whose unwavering care and strong support in life contributed a lot to the successful completion of the present paper.

Abstract

Bai Juyi (722-846) is a famous realistic poet in the Tang Dynasty (618 - 907 A. D.). He was an advocate of the New Yuefu (a kind of poetry) movement. He wrote nearly 3,000 poems, which makes him the most productive poet in the entire Tang Dynasty. Changhen Ge (lit. ‘The Everlasting Regret Song’), a long narrative poem by Bai Juyi, depicts the love between Emperor Xuanzong and his concubine Yang Yuhuan and their sadness of the separation between life and death. The poem, rich in its cultural connotation, has a wide influence in the history of Chinese literature and has been translated into English by many translators and sinologists.

This thesis attempts to study the translation of rhetorical figures in four English renditions of The Everlasting Regret Song (Giles 1884; Fletcher 1919; Xu 1984; Yang amp; Yang 1984) from the perspective of Eco-translatology. The major findings of this study are as follows: First, based on different motivations, translators analyze the ecological environment of the original text and make adaptive selections that are more adapted to the original text. Secondly, translators should strive to realize the three-dimensional transformation of language, culture and communication while translating the poem. Last but not least, all the translations embody the harmonious unity of the translator and the ecological translation environment and each of them has its own advantages.

Keywords: Eco-translatology; Rhetorical translation; Adaptive selection; Transformation; The Everlasting Regret Song

中文摘要

白居易（722-846）是唐代著名的现实主义诗人，也是新乐府运动的倡导者。他写了近3000首诗，是唐代诗歌数量最多的诗人。《长恨歌》是白居易的一首长篇叙事诗，形象生动地叙述了唐玄宗与杨玉环的爱情悲剧。这首诗文化内涵丰富，在中国文学史上有着广泛深远的影响，被许多翻译家和汉学家翻译成了英语。

本文试图运用生态翻译学的理论对翟理斯、弗莱彻、许渊冲、杨宪益夫妇的四个《长恨歌》英译本的修辞英译进行研究。本文的主要发现如下：首先，译者基于不同的动机分析原文的生态环境，并做出更适合原文的适应性选择。第二，在翻译时译者努力要做到语言、文化和交际的三个维度的转换。第三，每种翻译都有自己的优点，都体现了译者与生态翻译环境的和谐统一。

关键词：生态翻译学；修辞翻译；适应性选择；转换；长恨歌

List of Tables

Table 3.1 Different English Versions of The Everlasting Regret Song ........................ 7

Table 3.2 Rhetorical Figures in The Everlasting Regret Song ......................................9

Chapter 1 Introduction

This chapter first introduces research background of this thesis. Then it provides the objectives and significance of this study. In addition, the structure of this thesis will be offered.

1.1 Research Background

Poetry is an important heritage of the Chinese nation and a pearl in Chinese culture. English translation of ancient poems is an essential link in the cultural exchange with foreign countries. Chinese poetry creation reached its peak in Tang dynasty (618-907). Many famous poets emerged in this period, including Li Bai (701-762) the Immortal Poet and Du Fu (712-770) the Saint Poet. Bai Juyi is one of them. He has made great achievements in poetry creation. His poems are easy to understand and many of his works reveal the darkness of social politics at that time. Changhen Ge (lit. ‘The Everlasting Regret Song’) is one of the representative works of Bai Juyi. The poem uses a lot of rhetorical devices and contains a huge amount of political, institutional and cultural information. In the poem, politics and love are intertwined, and the author’s words are precise, which makes the poem widely concerned by translators and historical researchers.

As a new theory of translation, Eco-translatology made its appearance in 2001 and was comprehensively developed in 2009 (Hu 2010: 62). Hu Gengshen founded Eco-translatology in 2001, and in 2010 he founded the International Association for Eco Translation Research. In 2011, Hu Gengshen founded the Journal of Eco Translation Studies. He published the monograph Eco-Translatology: Towards an Eco-Paradigm of Translation Studies with the world-famous Springer Press in 2019.

Eco-translatology offers a new theoretical perspective for the study of translation. And the English version of The Everlasting Regret Song is a good case to illustrate the theory of Eco-translatology. However, no one has ever studied The Everlasting Regret Song under the guide of Eco-translatology theory. This thesis attempts to make a comparative study on the rhetorical translation of The Everlasting Regret Song from the perspective of Eco-translatology.

1.2 Objectives and Significance of the Research

Eco-translatology is a branch of translatology and a new direction of translation studies. This new perspective and dimension are very helpful for further grasp the whole process of translation and make more flexible and targeted use of translation strategies. In the previous translation of The Everlasting Regret Song, translators have unconsciously applied the theory of Eco-translatology, for example, adding the subjective understanding and analysis of translators to the translation by adding comments in the translation, which embodies the theory of “translator-centeredness” in Eco-translatology. But no previous researchers have studied and summarized them. This thesis attempts to run the theory of Eco-translatology through the study of rhetorical English translation of The Everlasting Regret Song, and to find out the specific working ways of Eco-translatology in translating The Everlasting Regret Song, and to summarize the rules.

This thesis aims to provide a new angle for the translation study of The Everlasting Regret Song and make contributions to the spread of traditional Chinese poems.

1.3 Organization of the Thesis

This thesis includes five chapters. The first chapter is introduction part. This chapter includes the research background, research objectives, research significance and organization of this thesis. The second chapter is literature review. This chapter presents the development background of Eco-translatology and previous achievements of the Eco-translatology studies. After this, this part reviews the previous studies on the English translation of The Everlasting Regret Song. Chapter Three is about the methodology of this thesis. Chapter Four is the comparative study part. This part studies the four English versions of The Everlasting Regret Song under the theory of translator-centeredness and three-dimensional transformation. Chapter Five is the conclusion part, it summarizes the major findings, points out the limitations and offers suggestions for future study.

Chapter 2. Literature Review

This chapter includes two parts. The first part is about the previous studies on Eco-translatology. It introduced the development and application of Eco-translatology. The second part is the previous studies on the English translation of The Everlasting Regret Song

2.1 Previous Studies on Eco-translatology

Eco-translatology, involving at least two disciplines, ecology and translatology, aims to introduce a new interdisciplinary approach to the study of translation. “Eco-translatology focuses on the integrity of translation ecology, interprets translation process from the perspective of translation ecological environment, describes the relationship between translators and translation ecological environment, and focuses on translators’ living conditions and development of translation ability (Hu 2008: 13) [1]”. Eco-translatology advocates “translator-centeredness”, and makes a new description and explanation of translation ontology activities from the perspective of the translator.

2.1.1 The Development of Eco-translatology

Many factors lead to the emergence of Eco-translatology. First of all, it is the embodiment of the transformation of social civilization in translatology. “From the 1960s, human society began to transform from industrial civilization to ecological civilization (Carson 1962) [2]”. More and more regions and countries started to concern ecological problems, relationship between environmental integrity and development, scientific development concept and sustainable development policy. In this context, the “ecological” dimension has been increasingly introduced into social science research including translatology.

Secondly, the transformation of modern philosophy also leads to the emergence of Eco-translatology. Since the 20th century, there has been a gradual transformation from the dichotomy of subject and object to intersubjectivity and from the center to the whole concept in the field of philosophy and thought. From the 1960s, Jacques Derrida (1967), a French philosopher, put forward the concept of “center”, and the theory of “both inside and outside the structure” and “center is also non center”. In the 1970s, Arne Naess (1973) proposed the theory of “Deep Ecology”, from which he gradually combined ecology with philosophy and ethics, and put forward the theories of ecological self, ecological equality and ecological harmonious development. Later, David Griffin (1995), an American philosopher, put forward the theory of eco-existence. It can be seen that what modern philosophy is facing is an important turn from epistemology to ontology, from the view of human center to the view of ecological integrity. Due to the existence of this philosophical turn, translation studies have begun to be carried out from the perspective of “translation ecology”.

2.1.2Applied Studies of Eco-translatology

On the basis of the above theoretical research, the application research with the nature of Eco-translatology has been carried out in different regions and fields. In the aspect of literary translation, Zhai Hongmei (2005) studied the English translation of Six Chapters of a Floating Life and drew the comclusion that the English translation strategy adopted by Lin Yutang is the result of translator’s selection and adaptation to the ecological environment in which he is located. Based on the theory of translation as adaptation and selection, Wu Yuanqing and Li Jieping (2006) expounded and exemplified the leading role of translators in the translation of Hemingway’s Cat in the Rain. In the field of philosophy and social sciences translation, Jiao Yang (2006) made a study of Yan Fu’s translation of Evolution and Ethics and other Essays written by Thomas Henry Huxley. Jiao Weihong (2007) took “the theory of translation as adaptation and selection” as his theoretical tool to explore and interpret Yan Fu’s translation and his “faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance”. In the study of business and law translation, Li Changjiang’s (2005) research pointed out that translators should respect the characteristics of foreign notarial certificate translation and increase the “degree of holistic adaptation and selection” of the original and the translation. Wang Xuemei (2006) discussed the translation principles and translation methods of advertising language.

2.2 Previous Studies on the English Translation of The Everlasting Regret Song

Many famous translators have sctudied and translated The Everlasting Regret Song. Among them, the translations of Herbert Allen Giles (1884), W. J. B. Fletcher (1919), Witter Bynner (1929), Rewi Alley (1983), Xu Yuanzhong (1984), Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang (1984) are well received and studied.

The research of The Everlasting Regret Song is mainly focused on the following aspects:

In the aspect of translation comparison, researchers compare two or three versions from a certain perspective, such as culture, literature and translation strategies. The translation they choose include the version of Xu Yuanzhong, Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang, Herbert A Giles, Fletcher, Zhang Tingchen and Wei Bosi. For example, Dai Yuqun (2004) compared the English versions of Fletcher and Xu Yuanzhong from the perspective of cultural communication in poetic translation. She got the conclusion that translators should first realize the isolation between different cultures, and then deal with it flexibly so as to cross the cultural gap in translation.

The research about the translation strategies of The Everlasting Regret Song mainly takes the theory of “Three Beauty” put forward by Xu Yuanzhong as the angle of view to appreciate the English translation of The Everlasting Regret Song. For example, Dang Zhengsheng (2008) commented on Xu Yuanzhong's English version and revealed the important guiding significance of the “three-beauty” and “three-modification” theories put forward by Xu Yuanzhong to poetry translation.

There are few papers unfold from a literary perspective. For instance, Wang Xianzhen (2008) studied the transference of the narrative style in the translations of the narrative poem The Everlasting Regret Song and drew the conclusion that in the process of translating the poem, the translator reconstructed narrative focalization through flexible use of direct speech and indirect speech.

Some translators have studied Xu Yuanzhong’s version from the perspective of linguistic perspective, for example, from the angle of social semiotics and cohesion theory. Such as the study on the reference of Xu Yuanzhong’s version of The Everlasting Regret Song made by Xie Sisi and Hu Miao in 2013.

The studies carried out in culture aspect mainly focuses on the culture-loaded words, culture heterogeneous words and culture specific words in The Everlasting Regret Song, and it also involves in the study of cultural images and the translation of allusions. For example, a study of C-E translation of culture-loaded words in The Everlasting Regret Song from the perspective of metetics (Wang Qin 2013). This paper proved that the dominant translation strategy of culture loaded words in literary works is changing from domestication strategy to foreignization strategy

The stylistic study of translators involving corpus research methods. For instance, Xu Huijie (2011) studied the English translation of The Everlasting Regret Song from the perspective of Intertextuality. He came to conclusion that translators should not only recognize the intertextual reference in the original poetry, but also realize translators’ creativity and subjectivity. In the translation process translators should rewrite the original poetry to a certain extent, so that the translation can better express connotation of the original text and be accepted by the target readers at the same time.

Some researchers also did summary research and reflection research of The Everlasting Regret Song. For example, Mo Liyun (2012) researched and counted translation and study of The Everlasting Regret Song in Britain and America, and find that their researches about this poem still mainly introductory research.

Chapter 3 Data and Methodology

This chapter first gives examples of different versions of The Everlasting Regret Song, briefly introduces the translators. Then this chapter introduces the reasons why this thesis chooses to study the rhetorical devices and counts the frequency of different rhetorical devices used in the poem.

3.1 Translators and Different English Version of The Everlasting Regret Song

The Everlasting Regret Song has been translated into English more than once. Different English versions are quite different. There are some examples:

Table 3.1 Different English Versions of The Everlasting Regret Song

This paper chooses four English versions either in poetic style (Fletcher 1919; Xu Yuanzhong 1984) or prose (Giles 1884; Yang Xianyi amp; Gladys Yang 1984) and makes a comparative study of these translations in terms of the possibly different treatments of images and rhetorical figures. The four versions are chosen because they belong to two different genres and are representative works at home and abroad.

Based on the Three Beauties principle, Xu Yuanzhong (1984) analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of the four versions of Herbert A. Giles, W. J. B. Fletcher, Witter Bynner and Innes Herden. In 1984, and created his own version of The Everlasting Regret. His version keeps the original beauty in terms of sense, sound and form and is considered to be the most successful one.

Yang Xianyi translated The Everlasting Regret Song with his wife Gladys Yang. In translating The Everlasting Regret Song, they adopted the strategy of free translation. That is to say, they pay little attention to the original beauty in form, and only focus on the spirit or meaning of the original text. They tried to convey the basic meaning of the original work with common words that is easy to understand for the target language readers.

Herbert A Giles is a British Sinologist. He translated Confucius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, and published Chinese-English dictionary in 1892. Giles’s translation combines rhyme and literalness with wonderful dexterity (Waley 1918: 12). Giles’s English version of The Everlasting Regret Song uses subtitles to remind readers of the development of the story. The eight subtitles: Ennui, Beauty, Revelry, Flight, Exile, Return, Home, and Spirit-Land, make the readers clear at a glance.

William John Bainbridge Fletcher, an early diplomat of Sinologists in the British Embassy, showed great interest in Chinese poetry. In 1918, he published the book Gems of Chinese Verse which has a profound impact on the translation of Chinese classical poetry. The English version of The Everlasting Regret Song is included in this book.

Fletcher and Giles tried to understand Chinese culture and spread Chinese classical poetry to other countries. To some extent, they all succeeded in realizing the artistic conception of Chinese classical poetry. Their translations are more easily accepted by English readers. They are all representatives of the metrical verse scholar, paying special attention to the beauty of phonology, that is, the beauty of meter and rhyme. However, due to their incomplete understanding of Chinese culture, mistranslation of some words and allusions still exists.

3.2 Rhetorical Devices used in The Everlasting Regret Song

The Everlasting Regret Song used a lot of rhetorical figures. This paper makes a statistical analysis of all the typical rhetorical devices in The Everlasting Regret Song, and classifies them according to the definition in Chinese Rhetorical Dictionary (2010).

Table 3.2 Rhetorical Figures in The Everlasting Regret Song

This paper finds that different translators treated these rhetorical devices in different ways. Therefore, this thesis will focus on the translation of the representative rhetorical figures with high frequency in The Everlasting Regret Song by adopting the theory of Eco-translatology.

Chapter 4. Comparative Study on the Rhetorical Translation of The Everlasting Regret Song from the Perspective of Eco-translatology.

This chapter serves as the main body of this thesis, aims to find out the specific working ways of Eco-translatology in translating The Everlasting Regret Song, and to summarize the rules. This chapter studies the rhetorical translation of the poem first from the aspect of three-dimensional transformation and then under the theory of translator-centeredness.

4.1 Three-dimensional Transformations

Eco-translatology generalizes translation methods into three-dimensional transformation, including the transformation in linguistic dimension, cultural dimension and communicative dimension.

4.1.1 Linguistic-dimensional Transformation

From the perspective of Eco-translatology, the main method of translation is the three-dimensional transformation. “Among them, the transformation of linguistic dimension is carried out in different aspects and at different levels, which mainly refers to the adaptive selection of language form made by the translator in the process of translation (Hu 2011: 8) [3]”.

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