Image In Chinese Poetry Translation

The Reconstruction of Images in Classical Chinese Poetry Translation
_____Exemplified by The Selected Poems of Du Fu Translated by Burton Watson
Chapter One Introduction
This chapter is the introduction to this thesis, which mainly discusses the research background, research significance, research questions, and thesis framework.
1.1 Research Background
The image, the combination of subjective feelings and objective objects, is regarded as the soul of the poem. It does pose great difficulty for translators. Many researchers have studied the subject and great importance is attached to the image transference in poetry translation from different perspectives, such as the domestication and foreignization and the relevance theory. For example, Yang

China, with a long history and rich culture, has been the focus of the world. Therefore, it is imperative that china should publicize such excellent Chinese culture as classical Chinese poetry while absorbing foreign culture. Nevertheless, there occur some mistranslations in poetry translation which fail to convey the exact meaning of the poet to readers and destroy the beauty of the poem. The image is an essential part of a poem, which perfectly conveys to the readers what the poet feels. Thus how to reconstruct the image becomes a common concern.
Tang dynasty, the golden age in the Chinese history, has made remarkable progress in poetry and many poems are rich in intriguing images and possess expansive and magnificent visions. Hence it is meaningful to study the poems of Du Fu in Tang dynasty. Nevertheless, it is almost impossible for readers to comprehend a poem of Du Fu thoroughly and appreciate the beauty without thinking over the images in the poem. For that reason the necessity of image research is

1.4 thesis framework
This thesis consists of five chapters.
Chapter one mainly discusses the research background, the significance of the study, research questions and thesis framework.
Chapter two mainly introduces the literature review on the schema theory in terms of its definitions, classification and features as well as those difficulties occurring in the process of image reconstruction.
Chapter three introduces the theoretical framework and gives a systematic introduction to how to activate the schema. Furthermore, this thesis conducts a thorough research on how to apply schema theory to poetry translation particularly on how to reconstruct images by using schema theory.
Chapter four is the essential part to this thesis, with an aim to discuss how to reconstruct images in classical Chinese poetry based on schema theory. It is owing to the same or different relevant cognitive schema that chances are that a specific image can be understood and explained differently by people from different cultures, which results in three cases: schema equivalence, schema conflict and schema default. Thus, it is imperative that translators should choose different strategies to cope with different problems in order to reconstruct images