5.5 Disrelation
Disrelation（non-correspondence）between the constructed image-G in TT and the original one in ST is the third non-ideal type of the correspondent relations in translators'construction of image-G.In the type of non-correspondence，the original image-G in ST and the constructed one in TT do not correspond to each other at all.That is to say，there does not exist a Gestalt equivalence relation between them due to the fact that translators fail in their attempt to convey both semantic Gestalt and aesthetic Gestalt of ideorealm of ST to TT.Take an example from the translation of Li Yu's poem“Gratitude for New Bounties”（李煜《谢新恩》）：[4]
庭空客散人归后，画堂半掩珠帘。
Tingkong kesan ren guihou,huatang banyan zhulian.
林风淅淅夜厌厌。
Linfeng xixi ye yanyan.
小楼新月，回首自纤纤。
Xiaolou xinyue,huishou zi xianxian.
春光镇在人空老，新愁往恨何穷？
Chunguangzhen zai ren konglao,xinchou wanghen heqiong?
金窗力困起还慵。
Jinchuang likun qi huan yong.
一声羌笛，惊起醉怡容。
Yisheng qiangdi,jingqi zui yirong.
The courtyard is deserted when guests are gone;
I'm left alone,(https://www.daowen.com)
The painted hall half veiled by pearly screen.
A gentle breeze blows from the woods on a night tender;
As I turn back,a crescent moon so slender
Over my little tower can be seen.
Though spring still reigns,man will grow old in vain.
How long
Will sorrow old and new remain?
Behind the golden window I feel weary;
Awake,I still drowsy and dreary,
But my drunk face is gladdened by a flutist's song.
(Translated by Xu Yuanchong)
After a grand feast is over and all the guests melt away,the poet is alone in the spacious and cold courtyard.A chill wind is blowing gently and rustling the leaves,which serves to underline and accentuate the stillness of courtyard.The more bustling the feast is,the more solitary the poet feels after the gathering.It is naturally painful for the poet to endure the lonely long night since his soul swells with desolate disconsolation.In the second line,two Chinese reduplicated words,xixi and yanyan are adopted as an aesthetic unity of sound,linguistic form and semantic meaning of literature presentation that reveals a subtle Gestalt sense of quietness and loneliness when night slowly passes by.In addition,the poet's melancholy of a loss is all but apparent in the image of xinyue a crescent moon.That is,there is no feast which does not end in life and flourishing prosperousness is perishable.The image of xinyue,a crescent moon in the Gestalt sense is embodied in the poet's vivid description which unfolds a scene that in a chilly sleepless evening,the poet gazes up at a waning moon,and expresses a skein of sorrow and immense sense of loss in his emotional world.Another reduplicated word,xianxian,is so vividly adopted as to be indistinguishable from the psychological contours of the poetic theme and the aesthetic picture of the poet.It has a direct bearing on the Gestalt structure constituted in the mental process of the poet's poetic creation.xianxian is a defined and vivid characterization of the image of xinyue a crescent moon,which makes xinyue a crescent moon so vivid that it seems to be just in front of our eyes.It fully displays the Gestalt essence of artistic conception in the poem,namely,everything might soon be vain and can be fleeting.The intrinsic quality of cognitive characteristics of the reduplicated word is a holistic schemata in which the poet makes the most of the linguistic symbol and the cognitive representation in the image of xinyue a crescent moon.Therefore,as the recreation of artistic conception of image-G presented in ST,it is of the utmost importance that translators reconstruct the profoundly inner meaning of Gestalt essence of gloomy mood and melancholy in the image of xinyue a crescent moon.It mainly includes the following key points.Firstly,the Gestalt structure constituted in the poet's mental process endows the artistic pattern in the poem with an emotional fundamental key of determinacy by delimiting the Gestalt range of three Chinese reduplicated words,which tremendously help the realization of artistic conception of being endowed with desolate disconsolation in the poem.As a result,how to translate these three Chinese reduplicated words(xixi,yanyan,xianxian)properly plays a major influence on the conveyance of artistic conception.Secondly,to accurately reconstruct the Gestalt essence of the image of xinyue a crescent moon,translators must take on proper emotional focalization and description perspective in their translation,because the constructed image-G in source text comes into being due to translators'clear-cut operation.
Xu turns xixi into“gentle”that refers to be used in Gestalt sense of mansuetude and pleasantness as if the poet enjoys the mild breeze which plays on his brow.As a consequence,it is not faithful to the original Gestalt sense that embodies the very image of bitterly-weeping wind.As for yanyan,“slender”adopted by Xu cannot convey the Gestalt hints to target readers since it doesn't manifest the original Gestalt quality of being solitary and lonesome as the poet feels in the sleepless night.When it comes to“over”,a spatial preposition used by Xu,it embodies cognitive relations of spatial-temporal projection between trajectory and landmark.The image of xinyue(a crescent moon)is foregrounded as the comparatively highlighting level of various conceptual parts in the coherent image-G whole.xiaolou(my little tower)is the ground and is just a part of underlying background in the figure/ground organization of image-G schema in ST.What sets it apart from ST is that xinyue(a crescent moon)is highlighted to the position as figure which occupies the focal spot as well as emotional focalization and it is melt invisibly into the background in TT.However,Xu's translation makes manifest the Gestalt essence of leisurely and comfortable atmosphere embodied in the image of xinyue(a crescent moon)which is disrelated to the original one in ST.It is no exaggeration to say that Xu's translation isn't consistent with the artistic conception of melancholy of a loss in the original poem since his translation version presents image-G as a relaxed and delighted atmosphere.
Conclusions could be drawn based on the above analysis.Firstly,the corresponding Chinese reduplicated words in classical Chinese poetry would most often add up to present homogeneity and relatedness of internal emotion of poets,rather than a lack of unity rendering the whole meaningless.In addition,they generally manifest a general tendency of a progressive increase in emotional expressiveness and Gestalt representability.To apply Chinese reduplicated words to image-G construction study is to apprehend the rich emotion implicated in them as functional wholes,to probe the Gestalt essence in the wholes and the degree of relative independence in classical Chinese poetry.In that case,if it is difficult to achieve literal translation of a Chinese reduplicated word,translators could take an English expression with the same emotions and Gestalt accumulation effects as the given reduplicated word into consideration.
Secondly,when images in an original poem are in a juxtapositional relation and are roughly parallel to each other regarding pragmatic function,the distinctive aesthetic characters of their own and the corresponding artistic effects are brought into light.What is to be particularly pointed out is that they comes into particular existentially spatial tension which is not created out of scenic progression of certain images but rather a continuation of the Gestalt quality among them.Without the psychological structuration of Gestalt configuration in the mind of poets,they might not achieve a meaningful spatial tension.To summarize,the integration of artistic effects of images within a poem formulates Gestalt effects,of which individual image cannot be torn out and construed in isolation.The aesthetic characters of the images are dependent on the imagery whole.That is,when an image is taken into complex Gestalt relations of the poetic context,the relatedness of two or more images in an integrated whole frees scenic elements of each image,and thus magnifies the Gestalt connotation of the imagery whole and foreshortens the aesthetic denotation of each image.Therefore,lots of efforts should be made on the faithful translation of every single image.Another key point lies in that a special effort by means of lexical and grammatical devices is also needed in translation in order to give specific images that carry more emotional information a privileged position,to make it the highlighting level of various conceptual parts of focal spot as well as emotional focalization of Gestalt perception.