Comp Stud Trans EN 7

A Comparative Study on Xu Yuanchong’s and Ezra Pound’s Theories and Practices on the Translation of Classical Chinese Poetry

许渊冲与庞德中诗英译思想与实践比较研究

王逸凡, Wang Yifan, Hunan Normal University, China

Abstract

The Classical Chinese poetry is an important part of the Chinese culture, and also a valuable contribution of the Chinese literature to the world literature. For the last one and a half centuries or so, scholars both at home and abroad have made significant efforts in the translation of the classical Chinese poetry. Quite a few of them have not only attributed excellent versions but also insightful views on translation theories. In the history of verse translation, Ezra Pound took up a crucial and unique position. His Cathy（《华夏集》） made a stir upon publication in 1915 and was considered his “most enduring contribution” to the English poetry. The success of Cathy is actually the success of the classical Chinese poetry in the United States. “Ever since then, the classical Chinese poetry began to attract the western eyes.” As for the translation in contemporary China, Xu Yuanchong is definitely the most influential one, whose excellent versions of the classical Chinese poetry are well accepted by readers both in China and overseas, whose criteria of verse translation - “beauty in sense, beauty in sound and beauty in form” have been widely recognized and appreciated. Taking Pound and Xu Yuanchong as the research objects, this paper attempts to clearly demonstrate the similarities and differences between Pound and Xu's thoughts on translation of Chinese poetry into English. On this basis, this paper makes a comparative analysis of Xu Yuanchong's and Pound's focus on the image in classical Chinese poetry considering skopos theory, in an attempt to find out the social and cultural factors that influence their translation activities.(Zhao Yiheng：1985，150）

Key Words

the Classical Chinese Poetry, Xu Yuanchong, Ezra Pound, image; translation theory, comparative study

中文摘要

古典诗歌是中国文化的重要组成部分，也是中国文学对世界文学宝库的巨大贡献。中外学者在古典诗歌翻译方面做很多有益的尝试，不少学者亲自从事翻译实践，而且还就诗歌翻译理论提出了精辟的见解。在早期译者中，埃兹拉•庞德无疑占据着一个极为重要而又特殊的地位。他的《神州集》在一九一五年四月出版后就引起了极大的轰动，从而被看作是他对英语诗歌的“最持久的贡献”，也是中国古典诗歌在美国的第一次真正的成功。“自此以后，庞德将中国诗变成了大众瞩目的东西”。而在当今中国的诗歌翻译界，许渊冲是最具影响力的翻译家。在其六十年的翻译生涯中，许渊冲翻译了大量的古典诗词，并在国内外深受好评。他关于诗歌翻译的“意美、音美、形美”的标准也得到了广泛的认同。本文以庞德和许渊冲为研究对象，试图分析庞德和许渊冲中诗英译思想的异同。在此基础上，就许渊冲和庞德对于中国古典诗歌中意象的关注并结合翻译目的论对他们的译本进行了对比分析，试图找出影响他们翻译活动的社会和文化因素。（赵毅衡：1985，150）

关键词

中国古典诗歌；许渊冲；庞德；意象；翻译理论；比较研究

Xu Yuanchong’s Life and Thoughts

Xu Yuanchong’s life and career as a scholar and a translator

Xu Yuanchong was born in 1921 in Nanchang, Jiangxi, and in 1936, when he was fifteen years old, he was in his first year of high school at Nanchang No. 2 High School in Jiangxi, where the Japanese had occupied the north-east of China and were advancing into northern China. But after his victory in the war, Mr. Xu recalls that experience as a solid foundation for his future path in life and for his career as a translator.In 1938, at the age of 17, Xu Yuanchong was admitted to the Southwest Associated University, a joint venture between Peking University, Tsinghua University and Nankai University in Kunming, Yunnan Province, during the war years. It was here that Xu Yuanchong became a student of Qian Zhongshu, Wu Mi, Wen Yiduo, Feng Youlan and many other great artists, and became lifelong friends with the future Nobel Prize winner in physics, Yang Zhenning, and Wang Xiji, the father of the two bombs and one star. All this inspired and established Xu Yuanchong's style of seeking common ground and being unconventional in his translations.

Mr. Xu also recalled that it was only after tracing his roots that he discovered that the source of influence on Mr. Xu's path to translation was his father's love of a tidy lifestyle and his ability to work with excellent finances. From an early age, Mr. Xu Yuanchong's father taught him to keep the four literary treasures in the most accessible places, which was later expanded by Mr. Xu from the four literary treasures to the written word, or the best way to express himself, and the most accessible place can also be summarized as the best location. Mr. Xu's father cultivated the habit of putting the best words in the most appropriate places. Mr. Xu's mother's love of drawing was an education in 'beauty' and 'joy'. Mr. Xu's mother was a student at the Jiangxi Provincial Vocational School a hundred years ago. Although his mother died young, among Mr. Xu's mother's belongings were two books of drawings and one essay, in which the flowers, trees, birds and animals greatly aroused Mr. Xu's love of 'beauty'. The story "Xiang Yu and Napoleon" in the essay fostered the idea that Mr. Xu would not judge a hero by his success or failure. All of this had a profound impact on Mr. Xu's later translation style and practice. During his time at SWLU, Mr. Xu received guidance from many famous teachers. Mr. Wu Mi was one teacher who changed his concept of translation. In his secondary school days, Mr. Xu thought that the idea of direct translation proposed by Lu Xun was correct because he liked his satirical essays so much. However, after hearing Mr. Wu critique the translation examination papers of postgraduate students, it was definitely still the case that the Italian translation made more sense. On the question of translation, Mr. Qian Zhongshu mentioned in his English letter to Xu Yuanchong that there were two ways to translate poems, one was the method of translating from a colourless glass plate and the other was the method of translating from a coloured glass plate. The former would offend the poem and the latter would offend the translation. Choosing the lesser of the two, he preferred to offend the poem. But Xu Yuanchong believed that the colourless glass translation method pursued truth, while the tinted glass translation method pursued beauty. If the original poem is beautiful and true, the translation cannot be considered a facsimile if it is true but not beautiful; if the translation is beautiful but not true, then there is a risk of distortion. So how exactly should we deal with this? Xu Yuanchong finds the answer in the Analects: "The greatest of the arts is to follow the heart without exceeding the rules".

In 1939, when he was a first-year student, he translated Lin Huiyin's poem "Don't Lose It" into English and published it in the Literary Translation Journal, his earliest translation, and in He then enrolled in the Institute of Foreign Literature at Tsinghua University, where he also taught English to the first graduating class of 1943 at Tianxiang High School. After the victory of the war, Mr. Xu Yuanchong applied to study at the University of Paris through the first major examination held by the Ministry of Education to study abroad. At the University of Paris, Mr. Xu read the realist literature of Balzac and Shakespeare, and the romantic poetry of Victor Hugo, which laid a solid foundation for his later translations of Chinese and French poetry.

No reference inserted--Zhang Qiuyi (talk) 09:08, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

General Introduction to Xu Yuanchong’s Theories on Literary Translation

Xu Yuanchong once said, "Western translations are about equivalence, one word for another, and 90% of their major words and vocabulary are equivalent. Unlike other scripts, only 50% of Chinese words and vocabulary are equivalent. While reciprocity does not contradict objective laws, it does not take advantage of subjective dynamics. Without distorting the author's meaning, a translation must bring out the flavor, essence and soul of a nation's culture", so Xu Yuanchong's theory of translation, specifically, contains the following main elements.

The Ontology of Literary Translation: Theory of Three Beauties. In the preface to Forty-two poems of Mao Zedong(1978), Xu for the first time put forward his Theory of Three Beauties on poetry translation “A translated lyric should not only be faithful to the original but also as beautiful as it is in sense, in sound and in form.” Being beautiful in sense means that in translating a poem, the translator should not only translate the surface level meaning of the poem, but also the deep level sense of it, or even the sense beyond word level. According to Xu, the translation process would be relatively easy if the content and form of the poem are in harmony. While if the content and form of a poem do not match, then the content would be the first priority in translation. In the situation that the form of the original might contain several different meaning, the most beautiful kind should be chosen in translation. Actually what Xu wants to emphasize here is the unique artistic conception of classical Chinese poetry which features implicitness, subtlety and succinctness. Being beautiful in sound means that the translator should try his/her best to present meter, rhythm, and alliteration in the original poem. To Xu, if the original is rhymed, the translation should also be; if the original uses classical Chinese tonal patterns, the translation could use light and stressed tone; if the original tends to use phrases having two or more characters with the same initial constant, then the translation could use alliteration. Being beautiful in form includes the layout of lines, antithesis formed by lines matched in sound and sense, and repetition of words or lines. Xu also made a hierarchical relation among the three beauties form: beauty in sense is the most important, which is followed by beauty in sound, and then beauty in form. In translating classical Chinese poetry, taking presenting the beauty in sense as the first priority, the translator should also try the best to present the beauty in sound; while by achieving the presentation of the beauty in sense and in sound, the translator then should endeavor to present the beauty in form. To Xu, the pursuit of three beauties should be the guiding principle and ultimate goal in classical Chinese poetry translation.

The Methodology of Literary Translation: Particularization, Equalization and Generalization. In the preface to 150 Tang Poems(1984), Xu raised the methodology of literary translation: particularization, equalization and generalization. Particularization refers to translation techniques like specialization, concretization, adding words splitting words and so on. Generalization includes translation techniques like abstractization, cutting words or merging words. And equalization means the translation techniques like flexible equalization, changing word function, active form and passive form. The great scholar and translator Qian Zhongshu had made a famous definition on translation that the highest standard of literary translation in “sublimation” by which means to transfer the language of a text into another language without any trace of stiltedness resulting from the differences in usage and at the same time retaining all the flavor of the original. Particularization, equalization and generalization are actually three aspects of the standard – “sublimation”. Particularization is to explore the deep level meaning of the original text through its surface level form. If the translation reaches the deeper level of meaning than the original, then particularization is achieved. On the other hand, generalization tends to turn the abstruse original into plain and understandable translation.

The Teleology of Literary Translation: Comprehension, Appreciation and Admiration. Translation is recreation, that is to say translation should make readers cheerful and relaxed - it should be recreational (许渊冲，2003:146）. To Xu，the aim of literary translation, especially poetry translation, is to make readers comprehend, appreciate and even admire the translation. Literary translation, from translator to reader, is an aesthetic process. Comprehension means the reader understands what the translation conveyed. Appreciation means the reader enjoys what the translation tells how it tells-the reader delights in it. In Xu’s theory, the translator should use the methods of generalization to reverse the disadvantage of target language, which would in turn make the reader comprehend the translation; the translator should use the method of equalization to reach balance which would make the reader appropriate the translation; and the translator should use the method of particularization to fully exploit the advantage of the target language, which would in turn make the reader admire the translation.

Xu concluded his translation theory as “Art of beautifulization and creation of the best as in rivalry”.

Ezra Pound’s Life and His Theories on Translation

Ezra Pound’s Life

Ezra Pound was born in Hailey Township, Idaho, USA, on 30 October 1885. Before going to Europe, he attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied American history, classics and Romance languages and literature. Pound made his first trip to Europe in 1898, then four more in 1902, 1906 and 1908, settling in London in 1908, where he became a major figure in the literary world for a time. Pound was a poet and literary critic, an important representative of the Imagist poetry movement, as well as an accomplished translator who collected and translated a dozen ancient Chinese poems Cathy（《华夏集》） in his 1915 and also translated the Great Learning（《大学》）, the Doctrine of the Mean（《中庸》） and The Analects of Confucius（《论语》）.Pound and Eliot were both leading figures in late Symbolist poetry, and his theory of 'poetic imagery', derived from classical Chinese poetry and Japanese haiku, made a remarkable contribution to the cross-fertilisation of Eastern and Western poetry.

In 1908 Pound's first collection of poems, A Lume Spento (《灯火熄灭之时》), was self-published in Venice, Italy, and in 1909 his collection Personae（《人物》）was published in London, and in 1910 his anthology The Spirit of Romance（《罗曼斯精神》）was published. The collection consists mainly of his early translations as well as the results and insights of his scholarly research over the years. In 1912 he became the London correspondent of the small Chicago magazine Poetry（《诗歌》）, and in 1914 he married Dorothy Shakespeare.

During his time in Paris and London, in addition to continuing his creative work, he explored and nurtured talent, travelled extensively with European and American literary figures, and made a unique contribution to breaking the sedimentation of British and American literature, especially British and American poetry, and to promoting the 'revival' of American literature. He had extensive contacts with sculptors, painters and musicians, and played a significant role in the formation and development of modernist thought in Europe and America. Between 1914 and 1916 Pound was very close to the Irish poet W.B. Yeats. He admired Yeats and took him as his teacher. Yeats was also influenced by him to some extent. After leaving Paris in 1924 and up to the eve of the Second World War, Pound's attention gradually shifted from literary creation to the political and economic problems of capitalism. At the end of the war, he was arrested by the U.S. military authorities and was held for six months at a Disciplinary Training Center near Pisa. In 1958, the joint effort of such eminent personalities as T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, and Ernest Hemingway secured his release. He returned to Italy, where he worked until his death in 1972.

Pound As Translator

Pound’s translation stimulated and strengthened his poetic innovations, which in turn guided and promoted his translations. In Pound’s literary works, it is often difficult to tell translation or adaptation from original composition. For Pound, there seem to be no foundational distinction between the two. Translation to Pound assumes an importance seldom found in other modern poets. To some extent, Pound’s poetics is essentially the poetics of translation. Pound’s theory of translation focuses upon the precise rendering of details, of individual words, and of single or even fragmented images. Actually, his translation theories reinforced and promoted his imagist poetics.

According to the principles of Imagism, translation of poems should also be terse, precise and compose in the sequence of musical phrase. Pound doesn’t see much difference between a poet and a poem translator. A poem translator should explore deep into the mind of the poet to think what he thought and to feel what he felt, so that the “overlap of mind” could occur and the cultural and linguistic barriers could be surpassed. Thus the translation could achieve “fidelity to the original” in both “meaning” and “atmosphere”. Pound doesn’t put much emphasis on words and sentences. Instead, he puts himself in the position of the poet and summarizes the poet’s thoughts and emotions, then turns it into the target language. Words and sentences are not the source text for him, but merely a media to introduce him to the source text, which is the thoughts and feeling of the poet.

Pound’s emphasis is less on the “meaning” of the translated text or even on the meaning of specific words. He emphasizes the rhythm, diction, and movement of words. By the movement of words, he refers to the contextual meaning and the intertextual. Pound thinks the “meaning” of a work of art can never be fixed; it changes as language changes. The range of associations of the words within an original work of art would differ with its new versions in a different age or culture. Pound explains the energy of languages as “words construction new relations to other words at any particular place and time, this quality lends language its energy”. Pound also takes words as “electrified”, the interaction of which could generate energy. Here Pound is actually talking about contextual meaning. He thinks new relations of words forms new meaning, that’s “the energy of language”. As words are not isolated from context, translator should bear in mind the context of the source text.

Pound’s theory of translation requires the translator to keep the historical atmosphere in which the words occur so that the translation process reveals not just what the words mean, but also their various implications. He believes that meaning is not something abstract and part of a universal language, but something that is always located in historical settings-the “atmosphere” in which that meaning occurs. To unpack the meaning, one has to know the history and reconstruct the atmosphere in which that the meaning occurs. Pound says, “Three or four words in exact just apposition are capable of radiating this energy at a very high potentially....The peculiar energy which fills words is the power of tradition, of centuries of race consciousness, of agreement, of association.”（郭建中：2000，57）

The Comparative Study on Image Translation of the Classical Chinese Poetry between Xu and Pound

Different cultural backgrounds between China and western countries must lead a lot of diversities in the cultural comprehension of the same object, which are the causes of translation divergence. Chinese classical poetry has the characteristics of implicit in connotation, harmonious in metre, bright in rhythm and well-balanced in pattern, so no single theories or schools have given them a satisfactory understanding framework yet. Chinese classical poetry as a relatively independent language world, its transference specially emphasizes the transmission of cultural connotation and aesthetic effect, which is called the transmission of cultural connotation and aesthetic effect, which is called the transmission of “language-image-meaning”(言象意). In Chinese classical philosophy, aesthetics and poetics, “image”（象） is the load of “meaning”(意), therefore, “reflecting through image”(象思维) and “expressing through image”(象表达) are affirmation and belief of Chinese language philosophy, especially poetics. However, English has an evident character of “expressing through language”(言表达), so there must be some problems existed during image transference. The following discussion will give us a comparison among some influential translators’ works. After the detailed analysis, we will have a clear view about their methods of image translation.

Case Study of Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound was one of the most influential and innovative poets in the 20th century. As the representative of Western Imagism, Pound makes significant contributions to American poetry not only as a poet but also as a translator, editor, critic and essayist. In order to break away from tradition and romanticism of British poetry, Pound and other imagist poetic principles: (1) To treat things directly whether subjective or objective; (2) To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation; (3) To compose in sequence of the musical phase, not in sequence of a metronome as regarding rhythm.(康连星，2004：114) In Pound’s opinion, image must be concrete and direct which will unfetter the poetic expression from the habit of convention.

Most of the Chinese poems translated by Pound are poems of scenery in Tang Dynasty, which takes mountains, water and vast landscapes as their subjects. Poets of such poems tend to embody their feelings and sentiments in these natural scenes. Chinese classical poetry combines poems and pictures together which get rids of moralization and comments that features the Victorian poetry. Greatly influenced by the writing techniques of Chinese classical poetry, such as the ellipsis of conjunctions and the juxtaposition of images, Pound used them into his poetic creation. Not only his creation but also his translation work caused a tremendous stir in American poetic circle. In 1915, Pound published his most influential translation work Cathy which is the first collection of translated Chinese poetry published in America.

Pound’s translation of Chinese classical poetry is not a mechanical one, but an innovative reconstruction. Some of the reconstructions are ignorant, but some are designed. Ignorant or designed, Pound’s translation is highly valuable. It gives us some inspiration in image translation. A study on Pound’s image translation of Chinese classical poetry would shed light on the research goal of the following thesis. A designed example can be taken as the best one to explore Pound’s creative translation. It also reflects the language difference between Chinese and English:

送友人（李白） 青山横北郭，白水绕东城。 此地一为别，孤蓬万里征。 浮云游子意，落日故人情。 挥手自兹去，萧萧班马鸣。

The theme of the poem is about saying farewell to a departing friend. Under this theme, vivid images are scattered skillfully in every line of the poem which can be classified into two categories-those don’t have cultural connotations, such as “青山”, “万里”, “东城”, and those culture-loaded, such as “孤蓬”, “万里”, “浮云”, “游子”, “落日”, The third line is juxtaposition of images with deep connotations: the image “浮云” is used as a metaphor to express the wandering life of the poet’s friend, while the image “落日” is used to convey the poet’s reluctance to part with his friend. The affection between the poet and his friend reaches climax in the fourth line. The image “斑马” means a stray and lonely horse. Horses can understand their masters’ affection and neigh to express their grief over parting. It is through a series of rich images that the poet expresses his deep affection to the departing friend vividly. Let’s take a look at Pound’s translation:

Taking Leaves of a Friend(Li Bai) Blue mountains to the north of the walls, White river winding about them; Here we must make separation And go out through thousand miles of dead grass. Mind like a floating wide cloud. Sunset like the parting of old acquaintances Who bow over their clasped hands at a distance. Our horses neigh to each other as we are departing.

From the translation of the title “Taking Leave of a Friend”, we can see Pound’s recreation. The phrase “take leave of” in English refers to the subject’s departure, but it is clear that the original title is the friend’s departure. The poet sees his friend off not the poet himself leaving. It is accredited that the first two lines are almost word for word translation because the non-cultural loaded images are ranged neatly from his translation. In the fourth line, “孤蓬” is a culture-loaded image which is usually compared to a person who leads a wandering life and has no one to depend on in the classical Chinese literature. Although it is not mentioned in original poem whether the poet’s friend leaves by boat or horseback, Pound gets information from “萧萧班马鸣”, so he uses “dead grass” to show that two friends are sadly departing on the grassland. This is a faithful but rigid translation which loses aesthetic equivalence. “万里” is also not a simple image. Pound translates it in the form of the target language, which turns out that he ignores it is not the actual figure “一万里”, but implies the remote way the friend has to take. “浮云游子意，落日故人情” is the key in delivering the original poem’s sensation for its concise and profound images. The juxtaposed and vivid images directly constitute two metaphors, and thus endless meanings and sensation are conveyed in such ten characters. Pound here uses two “like” to target readers about the inner meaning of “floating cloud” and “sunset” in Chinese literature. About translation type, Pound adopts imitation, which means to form and individual style. In image translation, Pound always tries his best to combine his feelings with the poet, and no convey the mood of thinking and emotion in the original poem into the target language. We must admit that some of his translation is not words or lines. He emphasizes each single image and individual detail which he thinks reveal the truth of the original poem. Ezra Pound was not familiar with Chinese culture, even did not know Chinese language when he translated these poems, which is the main reason causing cultural misunderstanding and image translation. Correctly Understanding on the semantic meaning of the original image is the foundation of conveying aesthetic feeling of the original poem equivalently.

Case Study of Xu Yuanchong

It is widely accepted that Xu Yuanchong is prolific and influential poetry translator in contemporary Chinese academic who has published more than sixty books about translation and practice in his more than sixty years of translation career. With the painstaking research about literary translation, Xu Yuanchong has established a set of translation theories of his own, one of which-theory of three beauties (beauty in sense, in mind and in form)-gives light to our image translation. Beauty in sense is the most important one which means that in translating a poem, the translator should not only translate the surface meaning of the poem, but also the deep sense of it, or even the sense beyond the literal level. “sense” in Xu Yuanchong’s theory not only refers to meaning, but also refers to aesthetic conception, thus his beauty in sense could be interpreted as trying to present the aesthetic conception and poetic beauty of the original poem. Let’s choose Li Bai’s Farewell to A Friend(《送友人》) as an example again to appreciate Xu Yuanchong’s beauty in images in his translation work:

Farewell to A Friend Blue mountains bar the northern sky; While river girds the eastern town. Here is the place to say goodbye; You’ll drift like lonely thistledown. With floating cloud you’ll float away; Like parting day I’ll part from you. You wave your hand and go your way; Your steed still neighs, “Adieu, adieu!” (Xu 2006:123)

Compared with Pound’s translation, this title conveys to us equivalent information of who will leave. Dynamic image “bar” in the first line depicts a magnificent scene that mountains stretch endlessly across the sky, which is closer to Li Bai’s bold and unconstrained poetic style. The image “lonely thistledown” in the second line is more suitable than Pound’s “dead grass”. From this place on, the poet’s friend will drift along just like thistledown blown by the wind, which transmits the deep level sense of “孤蓬”. Pound’s translation of the third line surpasses Xu’s in that Xu’s translation is a kind of recreation which loses deep level sense. If we translate it back into Chinese, it could be “你随着浮云而去，如同分别之日我与你分别一样”. “Floating cloud” and “sunset” are two metaphors. The poet’s friend will leave his hometown, family and friends, so his wife will be unstable like floating cloud. The poet’s affection to his friend is hard to part with just like being sentimentally attached to the sunset. In the last line, “wave hand” and “bow over their clasped hands” are two different ways to say goodbye which embody different cultures between Chine and the West. As for the sound image “萧萧”, Xu Yuanchong uses “adieu” to personalize the horse, which aims to build a sense of parting grief. Though the two translations have their own strong points, Xu Yuanchong’s version seems more likely to present the original beauty of images.

To grasp cultural-loaded image well is the key point in image translation. Compared with Pound, Professor Xu seems more dominant to translate Chinese classical poetry because he is accomplished in Chinese language and culture. During the sixty years’ research, Xu Yuancong takes promoting Chinese culture as his responsibility, and id dedicated to the cultural communication between China and Western countries. From some of Xu Yuanchong’s translation we find that Xu is inclined to target-culture-oriented translation, and sometimes in order to keep aesthetic conception of the original poem, he will recreate the poem according to his understanding towards the poet’ s affection.

Conclusions

In the thesis of the conclusion, skopos theory is employed to analyze Xu Yuanchong’s and Ezra Pound’s different translation purposes, which lead to their different strategies in their translation practice, and that is the reason of their different versions of the same original texts.

In his preface to The Art of Translation, Xu Yuanchong proposes that it should be translators’ obligation to bring the essence of the world culture into the Chinese culture and introduce the best of the Chinese culture to the whole world. He believes that translation is the catalyst in the integration of Chinese culture with the world civilization and that classical Chinese poetry is, undoubtedly, the greatest and everlasting contribution China has made to the world civilization, which is the reason why Xu Yuanchong chooses poetry as his translation object. In other words, the purpose of Xu Yuanchong’s translation of classical poetry lies in introducing and spreading to the world the gorgeous Chinese culture.

As for Ezra Pound, there are two reasons why he turns to the East and translates classical Chinese poetry. The first is the background Pound was in. At the turn of the twentieth century, English literature was dominated by conservatism. Unable to bear the monotonous and dull Victorian poems, Pound hurled himself into transforming British verse and into saving tottering civilization by injecting into it the cultures of the past and the alien. In the process of his exploration, Pound ran into classical Chinese poetry in which he found great interest and was greatly enlightened. The second reason is that Pound is the advocate of the Imagist Movement. He finds values in classical Chinese poetry because classical Chinese poetry is, by virtue of the ideographic and pictographic nature of the Chinese language, essentially imagist poetry. Therefore, classical Chinese poetry satisfies his poetic intent to some extent. By translating classical Chinese poetry, he hopes to make it clear that the presentation of individual images and the superposition of images can help regain immediate experiences. The Imagist Poetics has greatly influenced him, making him manipulate translations to serve his poetic innovations.

As Xu and Pound have different purposes of translating classical Chinese poetry, they have different criteria for their selection of the source text. Xu aims at introducing the best part of Chinese culture to the world. So long as a poem is beautiful and represents a certain aspect of the essence of Chinese culture, Xu is ready to work on it. But it’s not the case with Pound. In the 150 poems in Ernest Fenollosa’s manuscripts-the resourse where Pound obtains notes about classical Chinese poetry, he carefully selects 19 poems, the images and poetic sentiment of which he feels may best represent and promote his Imagist Movement.

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