Abstract

    This thesis is mainly about an onomatopoeia translation research on Wang Rongpei’s The Book of Songs-Guofeng. The Book of Songs is one of the earliest anthologies of verses in China, and most of its verses deal with the conventional Chinese spiritual and cultural phenomena. Onomatopoeia is one of the elements which show the ancient culture. This thesis mainly selects and studies some different examples of onomatopoeia translation from Wang Ropngpei’s The Book of Songs-Guofeng, which presents a deep understanding of its onomatopoeia translation methods and types on the basis of Dryden’s Translation Trichotomy.

Key words: The Book of Songs-Guofeng  Translation Trichotomy  onomatopoeia

摘 要

这篇论文主要研究了汪榕培《诗经•国风》中的拟声词翻译。《诗经》是我国第一部诗歌总集，其中的很多作品都涵盖着精神文化现象，《诗经》中的拟声词就是其中的一个文化表现。本文主要从汪榕培的《诗经•国风》英译本中收集了一些相关的拟声词翻译的例子，通过约翰•德莱顿的翻译三分法，即逐字译，意译和拟作进行研究，从而对汪榕培《诗经•国风》英译本中拟声词的翻译方法与类别有更深的理解。

关键词：《诗经•国风》  三分法  拟声词

1 Introduction

The term “onomatopoeia” is originally derived from Greek. The ancient people communicate with others by means of imitating the sounds of other things. Therefore, onomatopoeia plays a vital role in language formation. In grammar, onomatopoeias can be used as subjects, predicates, objects, attributes and complements. On the part of speech, onomatopoeia can also be regarded as either notional word or function word. Besides, onomatopoeia is one of the important rhetorical methods to make passage easier and vivid. Thus, it is employed in many literary works.
The Book of Songs is one of famous literary works in history. It is the first comprehensive collection of poems in China, employing considerable onomatopoeias in order to describe the ancient life. The Book of Songs is a deep and content-rich literary work. It is not only the treasure of poems for scholars of literature, but also the historical source for historians. In The Book of Songs, Confucianism is profound, and it shows the theory that man is an integral part of nature. As for political culture, The Book of Songs provides readers with its penalty and rituals of Zhou Dynasty. Moreover, Gao Yi, in her article Consideration for the Culture of The Book of Songs(2012) points out the farming culture, patriarchal culture and ethical culture. Therefore, the cultural value in The Book of Songs is significant.