Thesis When Poetry Argues
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THESIS WHEN POETRY ARGUES: ON THE TRANSLATION OF ARGUMENT IN CLASSICAL CHINESE POEMS AND REVISITING THE NATURE OF POETRY TRANSLATION Submitted by Shiao Ying Sharon CHU UCL Centre for Applied Linguistics, Department of Culture, Communication and Media In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy UCL Institute of Education London, England Summer 2018 Doctoral Committee: Principal supervisor: Dr. John O’Regan Subsidiary supervisor: Dr. Myrrh Domingo Professor Li Wei Dr. Charles Denroche DECLARATION I, Shiao Ying Sharon Chu confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. Date: August, 2018 Shiao Ying Sharon CHU ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to my principal supervisor, Dr. John O’Regan for his patience and good guidance, without which the path of my Ph.D. studies would have been much more difficult than it has been, and also to my subsidiary supervisor, Dr. Myrrh Domingo, who has offered me the most sensible advice on what it is that is required of a readable and coherent thesis. My sincere thanks also goes to Professor Richard Andrews, Mr. Brian Holton, Professor John Minford, Professor Yau Yuk Chong, Dr. Agnes Lam, Dr. Max Hui-bon-hua, Professor Sin Wai Chan, Professor Gilbert Fong, Professor Serena Jin, and Dr. Lucas Klein, who have offered me their own valuable views on poetry translation, which have opened my eyes to multifarious perspectives on a subject which is so complex and yet inspiring. Last but not least, I would be very much amiss if I do not also thank my parents, Lai Kam Helen Fok and Kwok Wai Chu, for their care and support all along, which have given me the persistence and confidence much needed for the past five years. ABSTRACT The assumption of the importance of the translator’s talent has often led to the result that poetry translation appears unfathomable, in particular the view exists that poetry translation can only be successful as a form of rewriting or re-creation (Bassnett, 1998), while the difficulties and intricacies involved in poetry translation may have led to the subjectivity and ‘isolatedness’ of numerous relevant studies. In this research study, I propose the ‘argumentative perspective’ to analyze classical Chinese poetry, by which I argue that description of the nature of poetry translation can be described in a relatively objective manner. Seemingly incompatible with the strong lyric tradition of classical Chinese poetry (Liu & Lo, 1975) but nevertheless a long-standing concept in Western literary studies (Kertzer, 1988), ‘argument’ is defined in this study as having a structural and meaning dimension. Using the comparative approach in translation studies (Williams & Chesterman, 2002), I discuss how different translations of the same poem can be judged against the threshold of whether or not the poetic argument of the source text is transferred as far as possible. While different translation issues are foregrounded as I discuss the two dimensions of poetic argument, the discussions concerned are given coherence by the common aim of demonstrating the usefulness of the argumentative perspective in achieving my research purpose of an objective description of poetry translation, as well as how such a description leads to a simple and accommodating theory, the latter I propose in particular to be contribution to the field of translation studies. All in all, the conclusions derived from adopting the argumentative perspective should have generalizing power, and allow poetry translation to be understood in a way which is rid of the mysticism, subjectivity, and isolated nature associated with previous studies. Keywords: poetic argument, classical Chinese poetry, translation Table of Contents NOTES ........................................................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1: Basis of Discussion of the Poetic Argument and Overview of this Study .............................. 5 I. Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 5 II. Poetry translation— what are the difficulties about? ................................................................. 8 III. Poetry – its translatability and the goal of its translation acknowledged ................................. 11 IV. Defining the nature and standards of translation objectively – what are the problems? ........ 12 V. Problems with poetry translation studies – the prescriptive paradigm .................................... 16 VI. Problems with poetry translation studies – the descriptive paradigm ..................................... 20 VII. Research objective: what makes the poetic argument useful? ................................................. 26 VIII. The argumentative perspective: what it has to offer for translation studies ........................... 29 IX. An overview of this research study ............................................................................................ 36 CHAPTER 2: Poetic Argument – Delineating its Meaning and Substance ................................................ 40 I. Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 40 II. Argument and its traditional senses .......................................................................................... 42 III. Argument as understood in Western poetry ............................................................................. 45 IV. Argument as understood in classical Chinese poetry ................................................................ 47 V. Defining the poetic argument in its broad sense ....................................................................... 50 VI. The specifics of poetic argument ............................................................................................... 52 VII. Argument as a structure of meaning ......................................................................................... 55 VIII. The poetic argument – its structural and meaning dimensions ................................................ 58 IX. Argument and argumentation ................................................................................................... 63 X. Summary of chapter .................................................................................................................. 65 CHAPTER 3: About Poetry (Shi) and its Selection for Analysis.................................................................. 67 I. Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 67 II. Poetry as literature in China ...................................................................................................... 67 III. The genre of classical Chinese poetry ........................................................................................ 70 IV. The form of classical Chinese poetry ......................................................................................... 74 V. The theme of classical Chinese poetry ....................................................................................... 78 VI. Genre, form, theme, and the poetic argument ........................................................................ 80 VII. Selecting the poems for analysis ................................................................................................ 81 VIII. The method of analysis and sources of poetry translations ...................................................... 85 IX. Summary of chapter .................................................................................................................. 86 CHAPTER 4: First Aspect of the Poetic Argument: Sequential Structure ................................................. 87 I. Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 87 II. The sequential structure as syntagmatic structure ................................................................... 91 III. Sequential structure in narrative poems and their translations ................................................ 92 IV. Sequential structure as poetic argument and its form-meaning relationship ........................ 106 V. Poetic argument of sequential structure as prose paraphrase ............................................... 109 VI. Sequential structure in argumentative poems and their translations .................................... 115 VII. Sequential structure as poetic argument and the new translation theory ............................ 128 VIII. Summary of chapter ................................................................................................................ 129 CHAPTER 5: Second Aspect of the Poetic Argument: Repetition ........................................................... 130 I. Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 130 II. Repetition as paradigmatic structure ...................................................................................... 131 III. Repetition and its translation – a preliminary exploration .....................................................