7.3.1 Xu Yuanchong's translated version
Fishing in Snow [1]
From hill to hill no bird in flight,
From path to path no man in sight;
A straw-cloak'd man afloat,behold!
Is fishing snow on river cold.(https://www.daowen.com)
(Translated by Xu Yuanchong)
With regard to Xu's translation of images in the poem,several cognitive translation strategies of image-G actualization are applied as illustrated below.Firstly,Xu turns the images of qianshan(myriad mountains)and wanjing(endless roads)into“from hill to hill”and“from path to path”.The ingenious adoption of the preposition“in”and the compound preposition(from...to...)perfectly reproduces the neat and balanced form of antithesis presented in ST,which smoothly realizes the language formal beauty of the original(Liu,2005).So does Xu's translation of images of niao feijue and ren zongmie.From the perspective of image-G actualization,the reduplication use of characters(hill and path)is an exact display of far-reaching and broad opening artistic conception embodied in the original.Essentially,the adoption of prepositions and the reduplication use of characters in TT,which are utilized as thematic and aesthetic elements of far-reaching Gestalt attributes,are already available for Xu's construal of empirically relevant images of qianshan(myriad mountains)and wanjing(endless roads).In particular,it is clear that default value of Gestalt-like conceptualization of the images of qianshan(myriad mountains)and wanjing(endless roads)in conceptual content is measured by Xu on a scale of informativity on the basis of empirical information of these reduplicated characters.In this sense,Xu's translation operation of images of qianshan(myriad mountains)and wanjing(endless roads)is actually an exact application of image-G accretion strategy proposed in the last chapter.In the way Xu's translation is consistent with the meaningful and thought-provoking artistic realm of the original images.However,it does not accord with the comparison in quantity between qian(hundreds),wan(thousands)and gu(lonely),du(in solitude)of the original.
Secondly,Xu turns the images of guzhou(lonesome boat)and suoliweng(an old man in straw cloak and bamboo hat)into“a lonely boat”and“a straw-cloak”d man’respectively.In fact,the image of suoliweng is endowed with symbolic meaning and Gestalt attributes of nobility and unsulliedness by the poet,which represents his subjective spirit of ridding himself deliberately from worldliness.Here,discourse intertextuality and interrelationship of these specific Gestalt attributes are also shared items embodied in thematic and aesthetic elements of the image of guzhou(lonesome boat).Xu gets the intertextual echo of two images and deems the Gestalt effects of discourse intertextuality as the most relevant element due to the fact that his translation of guzhou(lonesome boat)facilitates the ongoing construction of an interpretative perspective of Gestalt reappearance presented in the image of suoliweng(an old man in straw cloak and bamboo hat).As it stands,Xu's translation practice in the image of guzhou(lonesome boat)is a good example of the image-G restructuring strategy proposed in last chapter.His application of this strategy makes up an integrative and intensifying Gestalt configuration of intertextual transformation in which the characteristically maverick stance the old fisherman takes is vividly presented.Besides,(a straw-cloak'd man)visually heightens what the fisherman wears instead of his figure,which is in keeping with the spatial level of images with realistic sense presented in the poem,namely,from a close view—the images of guzhou(a lonely boat)and suoli(straw-cloak),to the focalized central image—the image of weng(an old man).
It is noteworthy that Xu's translated version both manifests tile rhythm of English poetry and rhymes with the Chinese syllable of“t”as the original poem does.The last Chinese characters of his four lines are“flight”,“sight”,“a float”,and“boat”respectively,of which the last two ones are actually diphthongized characters Xu tailors to make up coherent syllables in the TT.Thus it can be seen that Xu goes to great lengths to retain the natural rhythms of the original poem in his translation.In fact,the adoption of diphthongized characters can be considered as the analogous substitution of equivalent prototypical poetic rhythm represented in ST,which preserves the existing equivalent prototype category of schematic syllable in the original Gestalt mode.In this way,he makes good use of image-G preservation strategy.In that case,his translation makes a complete reproduction of the original image-G in respect to Gestalt attributes of the rhythmic schemata.In addition,the first and second lines parallel with each other neatly and orderly with regard to the syntactical structure(language form).So does the third and fourth lines.However,the lines in his translation don't possess a certain logical coherence and consistency since each line is an individual meaning group.Despite the fact that Chinese language is topic-centered while English language is subject-centered,this does not mean that it has made it necessary to adopt conjunctions in English translation of classical Chinese poetry.The adoption of conjunctions is likely to undermine the integrality of syntactical structure and disorders the sequence of language form in ST.As a supplementary approach for this knotty issue,image-G modulation strategy would be a wise solution that is applicable to it.