READER RESPONSE TO CATHAY AND PRAGMATIC APPROACH IN TRANSLATION STUDIES
Abstract
In this paper, I will argue that the namely experimental translation can do much greater justice to the translational issues. It was predictable that Pound’s limited knowledge of Chinese language would make his translation unsatisfactory. Nevertheless, the difficulty did not stop him translating Chinese poetry; instead, he continued the task of translating Chinese literature, from the Analects of Confucius, the Book of Odes, to the final work of the China Cantos. Increasingly, his Chinese knowledge improved, as we can see from the same poem translated in Cathayin 1915 and later in Shih-Ching in 1976. I am particularly interested in hisexperimental translation approach to give fuller access to, and understanding of, the translation process, and, by increasing interactivity, to encourage the reader of translations to become himself a translator. Of specific concern will be the tensions between the making of translation and the reading of translation, between creation and criticism in the case of Cathy translation by Ezra Pound. According to Snell-Hornby (1995: 81), “translation is a complex act of communication in which the ST-author, the reader as translator and translator as TL-author and the TL-reader interact.” Translation indeed generates a space of multiple and shifting relationships.
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