An Analysis of Wang Zuoliang

王佐良

An Analysis of Wang Zuoliang's Translation Thoughts I.Introduction

The study of translation thoughts is not only the translation criticism, but also a kind of evaluation. Mr. Wang Zuoliang, conversant with ancient and modern learning, is a learned scholar of tremendous accomplishment who enjoys high reputation in the academic circles both at home and abroad with many titles (an educator, a foreign literature critic, an expert of comparative literature, a translator, a translation theorist, a linguist as well as a writer and poet, etc.) simultaneously conferred on him, who is thus dubbed as―a versatile man of the Renaissance‖. He is prolific in translation theory with his profuse corpora, including Translation: Thought and Practice, A Sense of Beginning: Studies in Literature and Translation and Some Observations on Verse TranslationThis research aims, on the one hand, to analyze and clarify Wang Zuoliang’s translation style resulting from the combination of his translation theory with his translation practice, and on the other hand, to find out how important and significant a role Wang Zuoliang plays in building China’s translation theory and boosting our translation practice, especially in the literary translation cause. What a pity, however, that only a little has been done about the study of Wang Zuoliang’s translation achievements, especially the study of his translation style, leave alone to study it comprehensively, systematically and scientifically. So it is in need to study his translation thoughts.

II.Context

1. Wang Zuoliang's life, translations and achievements in translation

Wang Zuoliang is a famous educator, an authority on English literature, an inaugurator of comparative literature study in China, a noted translator and translation theorist, an outstanding linguist as well as an excellent writer and poet, because of which he earns the title of―a versatile man of Renaissance‖and enjoys high reputation in the academic circles both at home and abroad. In addition, Wang Zuoliang has an abundance of translated works, among which most are classical poems and essays, and some are short novels, drama etc. As a renowned scholar in the academic field of China, he has devoted all his lifetime to English literary research and translation. Being proficient in English literature, literary history, and comparative literature, he is also an accomplished expert in translation theory and practice. There are not only works of translation

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from English to Chinese but also works from Chinese to English. His translation is usually typical of clarity and novelty in terms of both language and meaning, and his art for translation is really perfect, especially, his art for E-C translation of verse, because poems are his favorite. As a result, he translated a large number of them, which have been mainly collected in his three books– Selected Poems of Robert Burns, Selected Poems and Essays of England and Selected Poems of Scotland. The poems he translated almost involve a large number of influential poets like John Milton (1608-1674), Robert Burns (1759-1796), George Gordon Byron (1788-1824), Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), Alexander Pope (1688-1744), Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), Hugh MacDiarmid (1892-1978) as well as the Irish poet William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), etc. Selected Poems of Robert Burns, a book of making a name for himself, is the only verse anthology of a single poet Wang Zuoliang has ever translated, which can be said to have reached the acme of Robert Burns’translated poems and their studies in China, primarily reflecting Wang’s ideas for translation. To sum up, Wang Zuoliang has translated quite a few of excellent English literary works (especially poems and essays) for Chinese readers and has thus made great contributions to the development of both literary translation and translation theory in China.

2. Wang Zuoliang’ translation thoughts and translation eauivalence

2.1 Translation thoughts may include three aspects: (1) the theme, the genre as well as

the technique the writer employs in dealing with them; (2) elegance of the writer’s article (namely, the writer’s style of writing including such features as being clear and novel, showy, meticulous or straightforward) and the keynote of article (i.e. the consistency of the writer’s delivery, for instance, solemnness, glee, tediousness or melancholy (3) the writer’s linguistic competence as well as his features of wording and phrasing, habitual usage, sentence structure, and even his particular way of saying things throughout his works. Translation criteria are relative rather than absolute, and that they are diversified instead of unitary. Differences of text types could bring about the abundance and diversity of translation thoughts.

2.2 Equivalence has been the central issue in translation studies although its definition, relevance, and applicability within the field of translation theory and practice have caused heated controversy in the past decades of years. Translation equivalence has become the highest criteria in translation, and also translators should work hard towards this ideal goal. And Wang’

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translations are surely focus on eauivalence.

3. the study of Wang Zuoliang’s Translation works

3.1 the study of Wang Zuoliang’s verse

Verse is a genre of literature in which special intensity is given to the expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinctive style and rhythm. It is usually written according to some pattern of recurrence that emphasizes the relationships between words on the basis of sound as well as sense. The demands of verbal patterning usually make verse a more condensed medium than prose or everyday speech, often involving variations in syntax, the use of special words and phrases peculiar to poets, and a more frequent and more elaborate use of figures of speech, principally metaphor and simile. Verse is the natural product of the poet’s ideas and wording entirely infused into his works and its form. Verse is usually typical of tuneful rhyme and rhythm, abundant imagination, multiple poem’s meanings, special language style and perceptible images. Verse translation herein is the hard nut to crush at least in three aspects: (1) Verse form is hard to be retained in the target version; (2) poem’s meaning is hard to be fully and properly explored; (3) verse style is hard to be reproduced. Nevertheless, the verse translator still has a lot to do although verse translation is so hard a job. He could be a successful verse translator if only he fully brought into play his creativity and tried to make as short as possible the distance between the original and the target provided that he is faithful to the original. The everlasting and flourishing verse translation cause as well as a large number of excellent verse translations (including Wang Zuoliang’s verse translations) published both at home and abroad throughout the history could serve as a convincing evidence.Wang Zuoliang loves poems all his life. He wrote poems, studied poems, compiled books of poems, wrote papers on poems and translated poems. Verse translation is his favorite in the case of his translation work, which he did most and best as well. His verse translation theory of―translating verse as verse‖and―poet as poetry translator‖had been very well put into his practice. What he liked to do most with devoted efforts in terms of verse translations is of course the English poems of Great Britain. Selected Poems of Robert Burns, Selected Poems and Essays of England and Selected Poems of Scotland are the most famous, covering the poems of almost all the influential poets in Great Britain as well as the poems by Irish poet W. B. Yeats and the like. His verse translations such as My Luve Is Like a Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns and Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley are widely read as good versions in

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Chinese.Having made a stylistic analysis of the poem My Luve Is Like a Red, Red Rose in the original, this chapter, by means of multi-versions contrast and quantitative and qualitative methodology, attempts to make a detailed contrastive analysis of the three versions by Wang Zuoliang, Guo Moruo and Yuan Kejia respectively. The analysis leads to the conclusion that Wang Zuoliang’s version is the closest to the original in poem’s meaning, poetic art and language use. Likewise, the contrastive analysis of the three versions of the poem Ode to the West Wind translated by Wang Zuoliang, Jiang Feng and Yang Xiling respectively indicates that

Wang Zuoliang’s version is faithful to the original and expressive in ideas with a thorough understanding of poetic meaning; closest in poetic art to the original with some flexibility; vivid in language and easy to understand.To sum up, the study shows that Wang Zuoliang’s verse translations are similar in rhyme and rhythm, faithful in meaning and close in style to the original but clear and novel in target language with some felicity, which is quite in agreement with what he advocated–―everything should be transferred according to the original, i.e. the target text should be tantamount to the original in elegance, depth, speaking tone and style.‖His verse translation, so to speak, is the very realization of his verse translation theory --―translating verse as verse‖and―poet as poetry translator‖.

3.2 the study of Wang Zuoliang’s prose

Prose Translation StyleProse is the form of written language that is not organized according to the formal patterns of verse. It may have some sort of rhythm and some devices of repetition and balance, but these are not governed by a regularly sustained formal arrangement, the significant unit being the sentence rather than the line. A prose usually discusses a subject or proposes an argument without claiming to be a complete or thorough exposition. In this chapter, the present author summarizes five stylistic features of prose: (1) subjectivity in the angle of narration; (2) individuation in discourse style; (3) contextualization in discourse structure; (4) emptiness in narrative tactics; (5) aestheticness in linguistic expression. Accordingly, while translating prose, the translator should be able to (1) grasp the style of the original so as to reproduce the stylistic features in the target text; (2) place himself in the specific context of the original so as to restructure its aesthetic features of content in the target text; (3) weigh his word so as to reduplicate the aesthetic features of form in the target text.Wang Zuoliang has translated some essays (though not so many in quantity as verse translations), most of which are from

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English to Chinese. The originals he selected (such as Of Studies ) are so classical and his translations are so well-received and influential that he is recognized as one of the most outstanding translators in China. Having made a stylistic analysis of two original essays Of Studies written by Francis Bacon and A Shooter by William Cobbett, this chapter, by means of quantitative-qualitative methodology, makes a detailed contrastive analysis between Wang Zuoliang’s version and other translators’versions. The analysis shows that Wang Zuoliang has extraordinary abilities and skills in understanding the original, weighing his word as well as expressing the feelings and ideas, and that his versions are faithful and felicitous with an appropriate, terse and precise diction, and a coherent and clear arrangement of discourse, and that he is sensitive to various styles and is really an expert of language. His prose translations not only faithfully transfer the original content or ideas, but also felicitously reproduce the stylistic features and aesthetic value pertaining to the original. That is to say, each of his prose translations -- the excellent version in both form and spirit -- is the very unity with form, content and style of the source text.

3. 3 the study of Wang Zuoliang’s drama

Drama Translation StyleDrama, a major genre of literature, is the general term for performances in which actors impersonate the actions and speech of fictional or historical characters for the entertainment of an audience. One of its striking characteristics is that the dialogue (or actor’s lines) primarily written for being read aloud is a significant component of drama on which the plot development, the character creation and the idea delivery mainly rely. Consequently, while doing drama translation, the translator should primarily reproduce to the best of his ability the colloquial theatrical style of the original—the dialogue’s poetry-like, artistic, daily-life and personal features. In order to reproduce them, the translator should not only be able to be loyal to the original writer but also take into consideration the principle of functional equivalence—the receptor’s response to the target text equals the receptor’s response to the source text. As a result, the present author suggests four points for attention in translating drama: (1) the translator ought to feel what the audience feels; (2) he should give prominence to the sound effect;

(3) the translation must be easy to understand; (4) the version should be free of annotations. Thunderstorm, the maiden works by the noted playwright Cao Yu (曹禺) written in 1933, is one of the best-known theatrical plays in modern China. Its extraordinary artistic accomplishment and the

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important role it plays in the history of modern Chinese drama gave rise to the appearance of its English version by Wang Zuoliang and A.C. Barnes in 1958. the scenario of the English version is as twisty, vivid, intense and exciting as the original; that the language used in the target text is plain and clear, felicitous and natural, as well as terse and implicit, which very effectively keeps such features of drama discourse as colloquialism, characterization and poetic dramatization; and that the target text very successfully reduplicates the ideas and emotions as well as artistic taste of the source text by firmly grasping the plurality and diversity of the inner world of the characters. In other words, Wang Zuoliang has faithfully and felicitously translated in the original into the English version.

III. Conclusion;

Wang Zuoliang’s translation thoughts in general could be summarized as being faithful to the original, expressive in idea, felicitous in diction and flexible in principle and strategy.―Being faithful to the original‖can be regarded as the most direct embodiment in translation practice of his translation ideas like―everything should be transferred according to the original, i.e. the target text should be tantamount to the original in elegance, depth, speaking tone and style‖;―being expressive in idea‖can be thought of as the product of implementing his translation thoughts such as―the language a translator uses should be alive, clear and novel‖,―an emphasis must be placed on appropriateness of style‖and―the target language shall fit into the specific social occasion in which it is spoken‖;―being felicitous in diction and flexible in principle and strategy‖properly reflects his idea that the translation method shall vary from writer to writer, from works to works and from receptor to receptor, which he has long advocated. It can be seen clearly that many of Wang Zuoliang’s famous versions are usually produced under three conditions. One is that the originals are usually masterpieces; another is that he likes them very much; another is that he translated them usually for the sake of his devoted research work. Under the circumstances, if a translator would like to produce good versions, one thing that is most likely to determine his success, in addition to selection of the originals, could probably be his interest and motivation underlying his translating. In general, the analysis of Wang Zuoliang’ translation thoughts is useful and practice and it needs futher study in future.

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Bibligraphy

[1]Wang Zuoliang，Translation Thoughts [M].Beijing，Shaihai Foreign Language Education Press, 1989

[2]Wang Zuoliang，Translation Eauivalence [D]. Sichuan University，2006

[3]张国琳.―空白和未定‖与文学翻译[D]. 四川大学,2005

[4]王志勤.文学翻译中译者主体性研究[D]. 四川大学,2005

[5]李燕.易安词英译之意境再现[D]. 四川大学,2005

[6]周琳;翻译家王佐良研究[D];四川大学;2006年

[7]韦宁.翻译对等：在理想与现实之间[D]. 重庆大学,2006

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