A Study on the English Translation of "Flower" Images in Classical Chinese Poetry

Abstract

As an important part of Chinese culture, classical Chinese poetry has always gain great attention. With the improvement of China’s comprehensive national strength and international status, there is a growing desire from the outside world to learn about China. In this situation, translating classical Chinese poetry and leading foreigners to understand it becomes an important step in culture exchange between Western and China. And it is also a constant pursuit of translators, home and abroad. The culture of flowers is a great treasure and has a profound effect in classical Chinese poetry. The translation of flower images is not only concerned to the reflection of Chinese culture, but also has a great effect on the cultural exchange between china and western countries.

Based on the theory of Palmer’s cultural linguistics, taking the English version of some classical Chinese poetry as examples, this thesis tries to analyze the translation of flower image in classical Chinese poetry. The core theory of Palmer’s cultural linguistics is imagery theory. Cultural linguistics mainly studies the way people utilize and understand language by analyzing the images. It presents that image, language and culture are interdependent and hold both image and language should be understood in culture. In a word, the core of cultural linguistics consists of image, language culture and their relationship. Apart from the introduction, literature review and conclusion, the body of this thesis consists of two chapters: Theoretical framework and the analysis on English translation of flower images in classical Chinese poetry. It firstly gives a brief introduction to cultural linguistics and then discusses the feasibility of applying the theory to image translation. Finally, it presents a detail analysis on the English translation of flower image in classical Chinese poetry. It also discusses how to translate the flower image in a proper way. It is hoped that the analysis will be beneficial to the translation of classical Chinese poem.

Key words: classical Chinese poetry, flower image, culture difference, cultural linguistics