English Language and Literature Studies; Vol. 3, No. 2; 2013 ISSN 1925-4768 E-ISSN 1925-4776 Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education Strategies for the Chinese Translation of The Widow’s Lament in Springtime in the Perspective of Comparative Poetics Zhaohui Yan1 1 Foreign Language Department, Zhengzhou University of Light Industry, China Correspondence: Zhaohui Yan, Zhengzhou University of Light Industry, 5 Dongfeng Road, Jinshui District, Zhengzhou 450002, China. Tel: 86-135-2651-9167. E-mail:
[email protected] This research is funded by Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China (11YJA751011) and ZZULI educational reform project of 2012. Received: February 1, 2013 Accepted: February 20, 2013 Online Published: April 26, 2013 doi:10.5539/ells.v3n2p9 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ells.v3n2p9 Abstract Since the beginning of “American new-style poetry campaign” in the 1910s, Chinese ancient poems have exerted influence on American poetry. As the outcome of Sino-Western poetics communication, The Widow’s Lament in Springtime is a household poem. The poem has both Chinese and American poetic features. When translating this poem into Chinese, the translator should try his best to reproduce the Chinese and American characteristics. Negligence of either side will lead to the failure of the translation. It is in this sense that translation is a matter of poetics communication. Keywords: comparative poetics, translating strategy, The Widow’s Lament in Springtime 1. Introduction As early as the “American new-style poetry campaign” in the 1910s, Chinese ancient poems began to exert influence on American poetry, and during the years of the 1950s and 1960s, the second high-tide period came into being.