Translation of Metaphorical Images in the Love Poems of Tang and Song Dynasties—A Case Study of Xu Yuanchong’s English Version

Institute of Disaster Prevention,Sanhe,Hebei,China Email:hanhongmei@cidp.edu.cn

[Abstract]This paper aims to find the translation strategies of metaphorical images in the love poetry of Tang and Song dynasties through a case study of Xu Yuanchong’s English Version.It first explores the frequency and features of metaphorical images in the poetry with the combination of a software tool and artificial selection,and then studies Xu’s English version to find the strategies adopted.The research shows that the frequencies of the four types of metaphorical images(character,animal,object and scenery)in the love poetry of Tang and Song dynasties are related to the metaphorical characteristics of the images.The images with universal cultural significance appear in higher frequency while those more confined by the context appear in lower frequency.The strategies adopted by Xu in the translation of metaphorical images include keeping the original image,abandoning the original image and partially keeping the original image.In addition,Xu’s choices of translation strategies vary for different types of metaphorical images:the translation of human images and scenery images involve abandoning the original image more than the application of the other two strategies,while the translation of animal images and object images involve keeping the original image at a much higher proportion.And partially keeping the original image is a strategy reluctantly used.

[Keywords]love poetry;metaphorical images;Xu Yuanchong;translation strategies

Introduction

Metaphorical images are abundant in Chinese classical poetry.They convey deep meanings while creating artistic conceptions.Those metaphorical images in Chinese classical love poetry that chant the eternal theme of human joys and sorrows are particularly representative.They not only contribute to the special aesthetic effect of poetry,but also carry the romance history of Chinese culture.Therefore,the translation of these metaphorical images deserves attention.As an outstanding translator of Chinese classical literature,Xu Yuanchong has made great achievements in translating Chinese poetry into English.The academic research on his poetry translation involves translation thoughts(Liu,2003;Wang;Ren,2007),translation theories(Zhang,2004,2006;Chen,2006;Zhang,2013),translator subjectivity(Nie,2009; Chen,2011)and language style(Zhang,2006).However,studies on metaphorical images in his translated poems are scarce.Therefore,this paper selects Xu Yuanchong’s English translation of classical Chinese love poems as research objects,namely,thirty love poems from 300 Tang Poems:An Annotated Edition with Commentaries(Chinese-English)and 40 love lyrics from 300 Song Lyrics:An Annotated Edition with Commentaries(Chinese-English).It intends to investigate the metaphorical images and their translations in the hope of finding the translation strategies adopted for these cultural symbols.

Metaphorical images in the love poems of Tang and Song dynasties

The metaphorical images in the seventy love poems of Tang and Song dynasties studied in this paper fall into four categories—human images,animal images,object images and scenery images.

Human images generally originate from mythology and legends.The poets used those well-known characters to refer to people with similar characteristics or in similar situations.Some typical human metaphorical images in the love poems of Tang and Song dynasties are cháng'é,liú láng,xiāo niáng,dèng yōu,pān yuè,chuī xiāo rén,jīn guī xù and chǔ kè.Each of these human images appears once in the selected love poems,but there are allusions behind each image,implying profound meanings.

Animal images are common in poetry.The poets placed their sentiments in familiar images of birds and beasts,producing metaphorical animal images.Such images in the 70 love poems include qīng niǎo,yuān yāng,fěi cuì,hóng yàn,dù yǔ,fèng,xī,yàn and yīng.Among them,the images of birds account for the clear majority.

Object images are generally used to express the poets’strong emotions because of their cultural and historical significance.In these love poems,such object images can be easily found.Jiǔ,qín jìng,hán xiāng,jǐn sè,cǎi bǐ and jǐn shū are the typical ones.These metaphorical images,as the sustenance of one’s love,invoke rich imaginations.

Scenery images are common in classical poetry.A poem often starts with a scenery image which stirs up memories or feelings,creating an aesthetic atmosphere.In these love poems,the most common metaphorical images of scenery include fēng,yuè,huā,shuǐ,méi and yáng liǔ.In addition,there are geographical images with unique metaphorical connotations,such as péng shān,lín qióng,què qiáo,zhāng tái lù,zǒu mǎ tái,fú yún duī.These scenery images often form the background of the poems,setting off emotions.

Xu Yuanchong’s translation of the metaphorical images in the love poems of Tang and Song dynasties

Research method

In this paper,a mixed method of quantitative statistics and qualitative analysis is used.First,KWIC power2.0 software is applied to search and count the representative metaphorical images in 70 love poems,and then the images with higher frequency are selected to make a contrastive analysis between Chinese and Xu’s English translation.Images with lower frequency are studied as supplementary means for the comparative observation of the original text and the translated version to explore the translation strategies adopted by Xu.

In the statistical process of the frequency of metaphorical images,it was found that although some images met the requirements literally,they were not actually the observation objects.For example,when the huā(flower)image was counted,fēi huā(catkins)appeared; or when the liǔ image(willow)was counted,the poet’s name liǔ yǒng was listed,for the surname Liu and willow are represented by the same character in Chinese.In these situations,the irrelevant images will be deleted manually from the list to ensure that the statistical results are consistent with the research content.

Research process

First,the 70 love poems were entered into the computer and saved as two files.One is a pure Chinese text file,and the other a sentence-aligned Chinese-English parallel text file for statistics,retrieval and observation.Next,KWIC Power2.0 was used to screen the metaphorical images and their frequencies in the pure Chinese text,and then the irrelevant ones were manually deleted.The next step was to retrieve the corresponding Xu translations in the Chinese-English parallel file.The results are shown in Table 1 and Table 2.Finally,the statistics and retrieval results were analyzed,and conclusions drawn.

Table 1:High frequency metaphorical images in the love poems and corresponding translations by Xu Yuanchong

Table 2:Low frequency metaphorical images in the love poems and corresponding translations by Xu Yuanchong

Research results

Characteristics of the metaphorical images in the love poems

Table 1 and Table 2 show that the frequencies of metaphorical images of scenery are the highest,which is consistent with the tradition of ancient Chinese poetry—scenery as the setting and the medium of emotion expression.Fēng,huā,shuǐ,yuè,yáng liǔ and qīng méi are all closely related to romantic love.The frequencies of geographical images in the metaphorical images of scenery are relatively low.These images carry special meanings and are more limited by their contexts,such as the image of què qiáo.Què qiáo is not a physical bridge,but a legendary bridge built by magpies with their own bodies for a couple in love to meet.The couple came to meet on the magpie bridge with joyous hearts and had to separate with great sorrows after a short meeting.The image of què qiáo bears the help⁃lessness and bitterness of those who are in deep love but cannot stay together.

Among animal metaphorical images,hóng yàn and yàn occur 9 times and 8 times respectively.Both hóng yàn and yàn migrate between north and south in spring and autumn,a characteristic used to symbolize homesickness and nostalgia in ancient Chinese poetry.Yet each of the two images has its own uniqueness.In the love poems of Tang and Song dynasties,the image of hóng yàn represents the hope of letter communication between a couple in love in two distant places.While yàn,due to their habit of flying around in pairs in the courtyard or under the eaves,was put into the poems as a symbol for a loving pair,which triggered lovesickness.Other metaphorical images of animals oc⁃cur less frequently.For example,yuān yāng,which is representative of faithful love,only occurs three times.All met⁃aphorical images of animals reflect the loneliness and helplessness of the characters in love.

Most metaphorical object images occur once or twice,but the jiǔ image occurs 12 times.It is a unique cultural symbol.For thousands of years,jiǔ has carried the ambitions of heroes,the inspiration and charisma of literati,the mutual understanding of close friends,and the melancholy of nostalgic travelers and complaining wives.In the love poems of Tang and Song dynasties,jiǔ metaphorically refers to the taste of parting and the bitterness of drinking alone.Those metaphorical object images that only appear once or twice tell stores.For example,in Zhou Bangyan’s Ci poem Feng Liu Zi,qín jìng is such an image.Qín jìng is the witness of love between Qin Jia and Xu Shu in the East Han dynasty.Qin Jia had not enough time to meet his sick wife who was then in her mother’s before heading for his new position in the capital city,so he wrote a letter to her,accompanied by a mirror,saying that the mirror was his most favorite object and he sent her this beautiful gift to express his deep love for her.His wife wrote back,saying that she thought of their feelings for each other whenever she used the mirror.She would wait for him to return home one day.Since then,Qin Jing has become a gift for one’s love.

All metaphorical human images occur once,but they are all related to legends.The image of liú láng is an exam⁃ple.This image is found in one of Li Shangyin’s untitled four poems.liú láng is the main character of a folklore.It is said that liú láng was born at the end of the Han dynasty.He lost his way while picking herbs in the mountains.And then he met a fairy and thus a romantic story was unfolded.Since then,liú láng has been used as a metaphorical im⁃age for an ideal love.The poet made an exaggerated comparison between himself and liú láng concerning the dis⁃tance they had to cover to see their beloved so that he could express explicitly how sincere his love was.Another ex⁃ample is the chuī xiāo rén image.This image is found in Li Qingzhao’s Ci poem Lone Wild Goose.Chuī xiāo rén or the flute player refers to Xiao Shi,who won his love by his flute-playing skill and flew away together with his love fol⁃lowing a phoenix.Li Qingzhao used the image of chuī xiāo rén as a metaphor for her late husband Zhao Mingcheng,romantic yet pathetic.

The above analysis shows that the frequencies of metaphorical images are related to the metaphorical features of the images.That is,the metaphorical images with universal meanings are frequently seen while those with individual⁃ized features are relatively less frequent,especially those allusive images.

Xu’s translation strategies of metaphorical images in the love poems

Comparative analyses of metaphorical images and their translations in Table 1 and Table 2 have shown that Xu mainly adopts three strategies in translating these images:keeping the original image,abandoning the original image and partially keeping the original image.

Strategy 1:Keeping the original image

The ideal English translation of the metaphorical images keeps the original image and conveys the metaphorical meaning.If the image in English and that in Chinese have the same influence on readers,literal translation is a preferred choice.In Xu’s translation of the love poems,there are quite a few examples of literal translation of metaphorical images,as illustrated below(S stands for the source language,X stands for Xu’s English translation).

S:huā bú jìn,/yuè wú qióng,/liǎng xīn tóng.—Zhāng Xiān:Sù Zhōng Qíng

X:Flowers will bloom again;/The moon will wax and wane./Would our hearts be the same? —Zhang Xian:Telling Innermost Feeling

S:zhù yǐ wēi lóu fēng xì xì./wàng jí chūn chóu,/àn àn shēng tiān jì.—Liǔ Yǒng:Dié Liàn Huā

X:I lean alone on balcony in light,light breeze;/As far as the eye sees,/On the horizon dark parting grief grows unseen.—Liu Yong:Butterflies in Love with Flowers

In the above examples,flowers,moon and breeze are literal translations of huā,yuè and fēng respectively.The words in the source language and those in the target language are in full correspondence.Besides,those less frequent metaphorical images also have fully correspondent English translations.Some examples are as below.

S:shuāng yuān chí zhǎo shuǐ róng róng,/nán běi xiǎo ráo tōng.—Zhāng Xiān:Yī Cóng Huā Lìng

X:A pair of lovebirds seems to melt in water clean;/Little leaflike boats go/North and south,/to and fro.—Zhang Xian:Song of Flower Shrub

S:lǜ mǎn shān chuān wén dù yǔ,/biàn zuò wú qíng,mò yě chóu rén kǔ.—Zhū Shūzhēn:Dié Liàn Huā:Sòng Chūn

X:Hills and rills greened all over,/I hear the cuckoos sing;/Feeling no grief,/why should they give me a sharp sting?—Zhu Shuzhen:Butterflies in Love with Flowers:Farewell to Spring

Strategy 2:Abandoning the original image

In dealing with metaphorical images related to the unique Chinese history and culture,Xu tended to adopt the strategy of abandoning the original images.Two methods are generally adopted for compensation:one is generalization,that is,to generalize the specific things represented by the original images,and the other is context creation,that is,to present the metaphorical meanings conveyed by the original images through creating contexts for understanding.The following are some examples.

a.Generalization

S:dèng yōu wú zǐ xún zhī mìng,/pān yuè dào wáng yóu fèi cí.—Yuán Zhěn:Qiǎn Bēi Huái Sān Shǒu(Qí Sān)

X:Another childless man fared better than I do;/Another widower lavished vain verse and tears.—Yuan Zhen:To My Deceased Wife(The Third of Three Poems)

S:wú duān jià dé jīn guī xù,/gū fù xiāng qiú shì zǎo cháo.—Lǐ Shāngyǐn:Wéi Yǒu

X:Why should she be wed to her noble lord so dear?/At early dawn he’d leave her pillow for the court.—Li Shangyin:A Nobleman’s Wife

In the above examples,dèng yōu,pān yuè and jīn guī xù are legendary characters in Chinese history.There is a story about each of them.Xu picked the most important feature of each and generalized it in his translation.

b.Context creation

S:liú láng yǐ hèn péng shān yuǎn,/gèng gé péng shān yī wàn chóng.—Lǐ Shāngyǐn:Wú Tí Sì Shǒu(Qí Yī)

X:Beyond my reach the far-off fairy mountains spread;/But you’re still farther off than fairy mountains green.—Li Shangyin:Untitled(The First of Four Poems)

S:chūn fēng shí lǐ yang zhōu lù,/juǎn shàng zhū lián zǒng bù rú.—Dù Mù:Zèng Bié Èr Shǒu(Qí Yī)

X:Though Yangzhou Road’s beyond compare,/Pearly screen uprolled,none’s so fair.—Du Mu:At Parting(The First of Two Poems)

In the above examples,the images of liú láng and chūn fēng have been abandoned in the translation.Xu created similar contexts as those in the original Chinese for readers to understand the situation.

Strategy 3:Partially keeping the original image

In the case that it is not easy for the readers to understand the connotation of the original image,Xu chose the strategy of partially keeping the image.Yet the disadvantage is that the metaphorical meaning of the original image cannot be preserved.The following examples illustrate this.

S:wèn shèn shí shuō yǔ,jiā yīn mì hào,/jì jiāng qín jìng,tōu huàn hán xiāng? —Zhōu Bāngyàn:Fēng Liú Zi

X:When will she tell me with delight/The time for us to meet?/When may I send her mirror bright/And she in turn her incense sweet?—Zhou Bangyan:Song of Gallantry

S:lín qióng dào shì hóng dū kè,/néng yǐ jīng chéng zhì hún pò.—Bái Jūyì:Cháng Hèn Gē

X:A Taoist sorcerer came to the palace door,/Skilled to summon the spirit from the other shore.—Bai Juyi:The Everlasting Longing

In the above examples,qín jìng was translated into mirror,the meaning of qín was omitted;hán xiāng was trans⁃lated into incense,the meaning of hán was given up,lín qióng dào shì was translated into a Taoist sorcerer,lín qióng was not covered.Yet the three Chinese images have their special stories,the omission of part of the images means the loss of the metaphorical meanings.

Xu’s strategies in translating the metaphorical images in the love poems of Tang and Song dynasties

The previous analyses reveal that Xu adopted three strategies to translate the metaphorical images in the love poems of Tang and Song dynasties.However,for different types of metaphorical images,Xu’s strategies are different.Table 3 shows Xu’s strategies when translating different types of images.

Table 3:Xu’s strategies in translating the metaphorical images

The data in Table 3 show that in translating human and scenery images,Xu preferred strategy 2(87.5% and 92.4% respectively),abandoning the original image and explaining the Chinese metaphorical meaning.In translating animal and object images,Xu preferred strategy 1(77.8% and 61.1% respectively),keeping the original image and interpreting the Chinese metaphorical meaning.Strategy 3(partially keeping the image)was relatively rare in Xu’s translation,indicating that this strategy was not an ideal choice for metaphorical image translation,which is consistent with the characteristics of the strategy—loss of metaphorical meaning.The findings reveal that Xu had his strategic tendency in translating metaphorical images.

“Translators,especially those excellent ones,have their own translation principles and unique goals when they are engaged in literary translation.”(Xie,1992,p.30)Xu has set an example.He has his own principles and goals about poetry translation.He once wrote,“If a translated poem can touch the reader’s heart like the original one,it has the beauty in sense.If it has the same beautiful rhythm as the original,it has the beauty in sound.If it can maintain the form of the original poem,it has the beauty in form.”(Zhang,2006,p.57)These“three beauties”are what Xu pursues in poetry translation.His translation strategy choice was supposed to serve this pursuit.The study of translation strategies of metaphorical images in Xu’s translation of love poems of Tang and Song dynasties shows that the best strategy was abandoning the original image and“creating something new to make up for the loss”according to the needs.As an ideal translation strategy,keeping the original image was taken as a secondary choice in Xu’s translation of metaphorical images because of the difficulty in translating the special cultural connotation.In some special cases,the translator chose to keep part of the image,but giving up the metaphorical meaning made the translation lose its original charm,so such a choice was a reluctant compromise.

Conclusion and discussion

With the assistance of a software tool combined with artificial selection,this paper investigates the main metaphorical images in the love poems of Tang and Song dynasties and their translation.The findings are as follows:a.The frequencies of the metaphorical images are related to the metaphorical features of the images.The metaphorical images with universal meanings occur more frequently.However,the frequencies of those individualized metaphorical images are relatively low,especially those allusive images.b.Xu adopted three strategies to translate the metaphorical images in the love poems of Tang and Song dynasties:keeping the original image,abandoning the original image and partially keeping the original image.For different types of metaphorical images,Xu’s translation strategies varied.In translating human images and scenery images,the strategy of abandoning the original image prevailed,while in translating animal images and object images,keeping the original image was the predominant strategy.Partially keeping the original image was the least adopted strategy.

The research scope of this paper is the metaphorical images and their translations in 70 love poems of Tang and Song dynasties.Compared with the vast number of Chinese classical poems,the rich metaphorical images and various translators’translations,the corpus has its limitations,so the research results have been affected to a certain extent.In addition,this study only discusses Xu Yuanchong’s translation strategies.Other translators’strategies concerning metaphorical images in classical poetry still need to be explored.This study is but a start of the discussion about translating metaphorical images in classical Chinese poetry,and hopefully further studies can be done to contribute to this field of study.

Acknowledgements

Our gratitude goes to the Institute of Disaster Prevention for its support through the projects of Golden Course Construction(No.JK202043)and Translation Teaching Team Construction(No.JT201605)and the teaching research program Study and Application of Teaching Mode of Literary Translation Appreciation Based on Flipped Class(No.2019KCSZ42).