A case study of formal translation of Tang poetry

Abstract

The beauty of Tang poetry is expressed in the combination of content and form. If the form is not well reproduced in the process of translation, the integrity of Tang poetry would be impaired to a great extent. By looking at different translations of Tang poetry, it is found that formal reproduction happens where there already exist the similar poetic forms in the target language; such forms as line length, poetic type, rhyme, rhythm and parallelism are full-reproducible; such form as tonal pattern is semi-reproducible; and some forms, such as pun, intertextuality and palindrome, are irreproducible because they are peculiar to Tang poetry and cannot exist outside language due to the differences of two languages. © 2013 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland.