5.3 Inclusive correspondence
Inclusive correspondence between the constructed image-G in TT and the original one in ST is the first non-ideal type of the correspondent relations in a translator's construction of image-G.In the type of inclusive correspondence，the original image-G in ST incorporates the constructed one in TT.In other words，the original image-G includes the constructed one as one part that makes up the holistic original image-G since translators fail to completely deliver holistic artistic conception presented in ST.Take an example from the translation of Li Yu's poem“The Beautiful Lady Yu”（李煜《虞美人》）：[2]
春花秋月何时了，往事知多少？
Chunhua qiuyue heshi liao,wangshi zhi duoshao?
小楼昨夜又东风，故国不堪回首月明中！
Xiaolou zuoye you dongfeng,guguo bukan huishou yueming zhong!
雕栏玉砌应犹在，只是朱颜改。
Diaolan yuqi ying youzai,zhishi zhuyan gai.
问君能有几多愁？恰似一江春水向东流。
Wenjun nengyou jiduo chou?qiasi yijiang chunshui xiang dong liu.
When will there be no more autumn moon and spring flowers
For me who had so many memorable hours?(https://www.daowen.com)
The east wind blew again in my garden last night.
How can I bear the cruel memory of bowers
And palaces steeped in moonlight!
Carved balustrades and marble steps must still be there,
But rosy faces cannot be so fair.
If you ask me how much my sorrow has increased,
Just see the overbrimming river flowing east!
(Translated by Xu Yuanchong)
The poem is imbued with the author's deep affection for and intense attachment to his lost land,which embodiesh is great lamentation over the transience of life and miserable life experience.The images of chunhua(spring flowers)and qiuyue(autumn moon)contrast starkly with the plight of the poet of having been reduced to the status of a prisoner that gives vent to his feeling about unwillingness to see the pleasurable scenery.Then,the image of xiaolou(my garden)refers to the prison cell where the poet was detained,which is by means of great value in conveying the Gestalt qualities of loneliness and desolation.The images of you dongfeng(the east wind blew again)in the next line is continued from the preceding images to demonstrate the poet's wretchedness.In particular,you(blew again)implies that he is kept as a prisoner year after year,thus showing his reminiscences of the conquered nation,which is sincere and moving.The image of yueming(moonlight)reveals the poet's unbearable misery and inconsolable grief for his beloved lost land.The poet selects the most repeatedly chanted image of moon with multiple symbolic representations in ancient Chinese literature,which is of great symbolized significance.Since his homeland that is thousands of miles away from the place where he is jailed has already came to an end,he could not bear to look back to his native land in the clear moonlight.bukan(how can I bear)is successfully in accordance with the gloomy mood of the poet,namely,he is bitterly remorseful for indulging in comfort and pleasure which leads to the demise of his nation.The emotional contour of the poet's compunction about letting his state perish is the manifestation of his unifying and harmonizing formulation of psychological activities that creates and constructs Gestalt cohesion of his deep psychological activities that runs through of the poem.yueming zhong(steeped in moonlight)has two aesthetically interior meaning.The one refers to a Gestalt contour that the lost land is also bathed in the moonlight despite separated by thousands of miles apart,while the other implies that the possibility of a reentry into his moonlit homeland is not in the foreseeable future.The two enriched Gestalt contour serve as a context to reproduce inexhaustible poetic effects of artistic conception contained in the poem.Therefore,as the recreation of artistic conception of image-G presented in ST,it is crucial for a translator to construct the poet's deep feeling of grief and remorse which includes the following several aspects:Firstly,deep-seated emotional performance in terms of aesthetics qualities embodied in images of chunhua(spring flowers),qiuyue(autumn moon),xiaolou(my garden)and you dongfeng(the east wind blew again)should pay its role of deep-seated emotional performance in the translator's actualization process of constructing image-G.Secondly,a translator should mentally formulate almost equivalent aesthetic experience of the original when interpreting the image of guguo(bowers and palaces)and smoothly achieve the recreation of Gestalt effects implicated in the image,namely,the poet's infinite deep affection towards his homeland.Last but not the least,it is important for translator to obtain a holistic comprehension of and puzzle out the Gestalt layers of profound meaning in bukan huishou(how can I bear the crucial memory)and yueming zhong(steeped in moonlight).In short,the realization degree to which the image-G of the poem is constructed in TT rests briefly upon the harmonious integration of these three factors.
The image of xiaolou(little tower)is translated into“my garden”by Xu,which is actually a deviation from the Gestalt qualities of loneliness and desolation embodied in the original image since it refers to the place where the poet was jailed.Since xiao(little)is highly vague,the pragmatic fuzzyness of xiaolou(little tower)should be obtained to reproduce Gestalt essence of the original image.When it comes to the translation of you dongfeng(the east wind blew again),“again”is not placed prominently in the third line,which is failed to highlight the poet's wretchedness as a captivity for years.Thus it weakens the Gestalt effects of the poet's lousy frame of mind manifested in the original.As for the image of guguo(lost land),Xu turns it into“bowers and palaces”.In fact,the poet skillfully places his deep feeling of grief and remorse on the description about the image of guguo‘lost land’which here refers to his beloved motherland.As a result,its Gestalt effects represent the poet's deep sorrow and grief for his lost land.Since both its semantic meaning and Gestalt effects should be taken into account in translation,Xu's translation omits its Gestalt effects and makes the original information incomplete.Although Xu's translated version achieves linguistic and semantic actualization of the image,it fails to inherit and carry the holistic image-G of the image of xiaolou(little tower)in the poet's mind.Bukan huishou is turned into“how can I bear the cruel memory”,which merely displays the superficial Gestalt layer of its profound meaning.As we explored above,the Gestalt cohesion embodied in the poet's psychological activity is that the moonlight arouses his recall of old times and his lovesickness of his lost land.In this perspective,Xu is unable to completely transmit the underlying Gestalt essence and,to the largest extent,reproduce holistic comprehension of the original one.In addition,his translation of yueming zhong(steeped in moonlight)just simply modifies“bowers and palaces”from the pragmatic perspective,which cannot retain the most profound artistic realm of the original for the target readers.The image so reproduced in TT is inconsequential and incomplete,lacking in what is called holistic Gestalt conception.That is to say,his construction of the Gestalt qualities of the image is to tightly integrate the linguistic elements into the target language.However,the overall Gestalt essence of yueming zhong(steeped in moonlight)cannot be organically unified when its construction is thoroughly grounded on linguistic actualization.In view of the above,Xu's translation of this poem provides a good example of inclusive corresponding relation between the constructed image-G in TT and the original one in ST,which manifests partial equivalence of holistic artistic conception and Gestalt sense presented between ST and TT.
It could be drawn from the above analysis that Gestalt essence of classical Chinese poetry mainly lies in the rich implicative meanings of images and adequate attention should be paid to lexical selection in image translation in order to reconstruct image-G that is fairly influential in the conveyance of Gestalt effects.The fidelity and vitality of the translation of classical Chinese poetry ascribe much to the way that lexical items are selected to represent artistic conception embodied in images.Poets'spiritual and emotional world manifested in their poetry is often not the literal revelation or the forthright narration,but adopting images of greatly enlightening value to convey exquisite Gestalt connotations.Despite a great quantity of image concepts exist in almost all literary works,it is undeniable that quite a few image concepts in classical Chinese poetry are indeed Chinese language-specific and cultural-specific items.Such cultural images represent certain poetic notions which possess certain artistic characteristics and cultural connotations.As the artistic consolidation of authors'cognition of the world,cultural images contain the central embodiment of artistic features and Gestalt essence.In that case,there is no doubt that it is a hard work for translators to retain the cultural image and avoid the loss and dislocation of such cultural images.Despite of the fact that translators are not at liberty to formulate images of their own,they are deeply inspired and enlightened by the linguistic frame and Gestalt cohesion which have contributed to the recreation of cultural images in TT.A static matching between different linguistic forms of cultural images probably sparks off nonequivalence at functional level,while holistic correspondence of the linguistic frame based on the emotional category of images at aesthetics level gives birth to a high-degree completeness and authenticity of Gestalt correspondence.If translators cannot convey the Gestalt essence of images in TT,the faithful reproduction of linguistic matching of images is meaningless.Thus,it is not only inevitable but also permissible for a translator to change the linguistic form when necessary.