Thetranslationofculturalimagesinpoetry.doc

PAGE  PAGE 4 The Translation of Cultural Images in Poetry Introduction Poetry is always considered as an unconquerable fortress in translation. The romantic charm and artistic conception, all of these things, which just make poetry to be poetry, can not be interpreted in another language. To be brief, poetry is untranslatable because of the great difficulties in conveying the image, especially the images under special cultural background. The definition of image and its importance in poetry Image is a mental picture of something that the sense organ of the writer felt, and underwent some kind of fabrication and creation, and then distills from the life reality to art reality. 江城子 乙卯正月二十日夜记梦 十年生死两茫茫。不思量，自难忘。千里孤坟，无处话凄凉。纵使相逢应不识，尘满面，鬓如霜。 夜来幽梦忽还乡。小轩窗，正梳妆。相顾无言，惟有泪千行。料得年年肠断处，明月夜，短松冈。 In the poem, we can imagine: looking through the window, the poet sees his lover who is decorating herself. It’s so close, yet so distant. Nothing can be done besides tears. Not only Chinese literary men devote much attention to the image in poetry, but also the Western critics attach great importance to image. Here is an English poem wonderful in image, which is Evening by the English poet Richard AldingtonEvening The chimneys, rank on rank, Cut the clear sky; The moon, With a rag of gauze about he loins, Press among them, an awkward Venus; And here am I looking wantonly at her Over the kitchen sink The artistic conception of this poem is that the chimneys make the moon lose its romantic tinges, even the goddess of beauty Venus becomes “awkward”, and “I” could just “look wantonly”. Chimneys, rank, clear sky, moon, a ray of gauze, awkward Venus, kitchen sink, all of these images composed to the prospect of the poem. A general survey of image translation How to convey the images of the primary poem accurately becomes the question that every poetic translator need to think seriously. We may say that whether w