Abstract

Intercultural translation, which has always been an intractable field, is evidently difficult; not only because of the differences between the source language and the target language, but also because of the gap between the source culture and the target culture, which is almost impossible to leap over. According to Huang Gaoxin’s Quantitative Approach on English-Chinese verse translation, a translation can be measured mainly with four rules: 1. The number of stanzas and lines; 2. The number of meters and pause; 3. The number of words and Chinese characters; 4. The patterns of rhythms. The three representative translations of the verse A Red Red Rose are respectively analyzed with this approach in this thesis, as well as from the angle of cultural translation, so as to illustrate the caprice and unpredictability in verse translation caused by cultural and literal differences, which is difficult to be measured by any tangible rules; and a translation should also be valued according to its function as well as its contest.

KEYWORDS:Intercultural translation; Verse translation; Quantitative Approach.

摘　要

跨文化翻译历来是一难以驾驭的翻译领域，其难度可想而知；而其难并不仅仅因为源语和目标语之间的差异，亦来自源文化与目标文化之间的鸿沟；两种文化间的这一鸿沟始终难以真正跨越。在英-汉格律诗翻译中，由于需顾及押韵、音步、措辞等因素，难度尤甚。依据黄杲忻的英汉格律诗翻译量化理论，一译本的优劣可依照四个标准衡量：1.诗歌阙数与行数；2.诗歌音步数与顿数；3.诗歌单词数与汉字数，4.韵式。本文分别依据这一量化理论分析《红红的玫瑰》的三个译本，同时亦从文化分析角度加以解析，旨在阐释诗歌翻译中由文化差异和文字差别所导致的多变和不可预知性，因而格律诗翻译是难以用具体的标准条目来衡量的。

关键词:跨文化翻译；诗歌翻译；翻译量化理论。

1. Introduction of research background
Translation is usually being referred as an art in virtue of its uncountable possibilities with different translators; and poetry, featuring by a strong sense of rhyme and linguistic regularity, requires much more in translation, thus poetry translation has long been considered as a special session in the field of translation. Robert Frost said: Poetry is what gets lost in translation. Actually in translation practice, poetry translation is indeed much more difficult than other literary forms, and a few translators were so pessimistic even to name it as “untranslatable”. “Poetry is the only rhyming literary form, it represents order and aesthetics ”, while English and Chinese belongs to two language families, the two languages are greatly different from each other in both order and aesthetics; thus the translations from either language to the other must be varied in many aspects such as style, length, diction or tone. It is common that two translations do not contain even a common word although they are translated from the same poem, and one translation may be twice the length of the other.