It is known that it is difficult to do translating. When it comes to poetry, it's much harder. Poetry is quite different from other literary forms because it relies greatly on the intrinsic quality and style of the national language. In the rendering process, if the external linguistic form of the original poem is changed, the internal beauty may be violated. So some people think poetry is untranslatable. CCP defies translation in some sense. Because Chinese and English, are very different languages both linguistically and culturally, thus the failure of translation is unavoidable in some cases. According to modern American translation critic Eugene A. Nida , translation is a field full of paradoxes and the paradox of translatability and untranslatability is one of them. All the paradoxes in translation field originate from the paradoxes of language and culture. Thus poetic untranslatability can be expounded and manifested in the two main aspects: linguistic untranslatability and cultural untranslatabilty. The linguistic untranslatability is absolute, while the cultural untranslatability is relative.
3. 1 Linguistic Untranslatability
Ezra Pound said in his essay How to Read, “Great literature is simply charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree”. Some literary works are difficult or even impossible to translate, just because human languages are different from one another. Linguistic untranslatability reflects the features unique to a language.
Chinese is a tone language, while English is a stress language. Chinese is a tone language, which emphasizes different tones. The four tones of Chinese characters have no perfect equivalence in English. The four tones are divided into two categories, the ping sheng or the level tone, which is relatively tense, and the ze sheng or oblique tone, which is relatively slack. The Classical Chinese poems are all in fixed forms, there are three essential elements: the allocation of oblique tones and level tones, the neat antithesis and rhyme. The number of characters, five or seven measures the verse length of the CCP. The three elements constitute several fixed poetic forms, such as Wujue, Qijue, Wuyan lushi, Qiyan lushi and Ci. In contrast, English is called a stress language, which has notable stressed or unstressed sounds. Its poety is mainly made up of metric foot and rhyme. The metric foot or metre is composed of unstressed and stressed syllables. The metric patterns fall into five: Iamb, Trochee, Spondee, Anapest and Dactyl. The number of the metres decides the verse length of the Classical English Poetry. The metre, the verse and the rhyme are three essential elements that make several fixed forms of English poetry: the Heroic Couplet, the Triplet, the Quatrain, the Rime Royal, the Ottava Rima, the Spenserian Stanza, the Sonnet. Chinese and English poetry have different metrical systems and rhyme schemes to form the musical property in poetry. The functional equivalence can only be achieved by replacing the even and oblique tones in Chinese with weak and strong beats in English translated texts. That is to say, a Chinese verse may be translated into English versions in iambics, trochaics, dactylics or anapaestics. In this case the beauty in sound may possibly be lost so that the readers will perhaps not experience the same artistic treat as the native readers.
Onomatopoeia is widely used in CCP, whose equivalence is difficult to find in English. The following are the lines selected from the famous epic poem by Bai Juyi(白居易《琵琶行并序》):
大弦嘈嘈如急雨，
小弦切切如私语。
嘈嘈切切错杂弹，
大珠小珠落玉盘。
The reduplicated words“嘈嘈，切切”enable the internal music of the poem to flow smoothly, which is difficult to translate. This tendency in words to echo the meaning by the actual sounds is called onomatopoeia. The attachment of words to their signified intrinsic meanings can be reinforced or reawakened by onomatopoeia. Sometimes poets use onomatopoeia as a deliberate artistic effect.
Linguistic untranslatability arises when dealing with phonological ambiguity. CCP is rich in the phonological ambiguity caused by the use of homophones. Some homophonic couplets are more difficult to translate, like “因荷(何)而得藕(偶)?有杏(幸)不须梅(媒)!”. “荷” and “何”, “藕” and “偶”, “杏” and “幸”, “梅” and “媒” are respectively homophones. Now let's look at a poem written by Li Bai(李白《春思》):
燕草如碧丝，
秦桑低绿枝。
当君怀归日，
是妾断肠时。
春风不相识，
何事入罗衅?
This is a popular poem that describes the love between a man and a woman. Here phonological ambiguity is used “丝” implies “思” while “枝” hints “知”. The poet uses the homophones “丝” and “思”，“枝” and “知” to show that the lovers miss each other strongly.
3. 2 Cultural Untranslatability
Countries differ in social structure, social concepts, social customs and religious concepts. In general, a language is the product of the unique culture of a country. Because of the cultural differences between countries, regions and nations, great hardships in translation arise. In fact, it may be said that poetry is often like a mirror that reflects the conditions of a nation's culture. A poem is usually set within a sociocultural situation, which is the source of the artistic creation. So when a poem is being translated, the translator inevitably has to face the cultural issues. It is known that people in different regions have different concepts about seasons, climate and relevant species or phenomena. Within a certain culture and society, sometimes the way that images, symbols, and abstract notions are operated can seldom have a precise equivalence in another culture. Consequently, this may result in relative untranslatability, less absolute than linguistic untranslatability.
The meanings of a poem may be far beyond the surface meaning. The following is a poem written by Liu Zhongyuan(柳宗元).
江雪
千山鸟飞绝，
万径人踪灭。
孤舟蓑笠翁，
独钓寒江雪。
River Snow
A hundred mountains and no bird,
A thousand paths without a footprint;
A little boat, a bamboo cloak,
An old man fishing in the cold river-snow.
(tr. W. Bynner)(qtd. in Cui Jian, Ya Xi 60)
On the surface the original poem describes a beautiful scene, an old man wearing a bamboo cloak fishes alone in the cold river in cold winter. The deep meaning of the poem shows that the poet was morally lofty. But the English version fails to render the deep meaning of the original poem.
An ordinary object might be related to a traditional or local custom. In this case, it is easy to put its name into English but difficult to express the symbolic meanings in the Chinese culture. Take an example, there is “丁香结” in the following four lines from two different poems, “殷勤解却丁香结，纵放繁枝散诞春”(陆龟蒙《丁香》) and “芭蕉不展丁香结，同向春风各自愁”(李商隐《代赠》). The basic meaning of “丁香结” is the bud of clove, but the poets in Tang Dynasty and Song Dynasty used it to refer to the grief that was difficult to rid. Since the English equivalent doesn't keep the cultural meaning in the translation process, the cultural background can only be introduced in a footnote.
A certain image may arouse different emotions among peoples from different cultures. The reason is that due to distinct historical and cultural differences, people of different nations may have completely different responses to a certain image. To put it in another way, some words do not have universally accepted cultural connotations and aesthetic effects. Untranslatability means not only that the translator cannot find an equivalent in TL, but also that the equivalent cannot arouse the same association and emotion among the TL readers as the original one does in the SL readers. Take two lines in a poem written by Li Shangyin as an example:“春蚕到死丝方尽，蜡炬成灰泪始干”(李商隐《无题》). “春蚕” is an important image in this poem. In Chinese “春蚕” is associated with “hard work and devotion”. However, a foreign reader might feel sick at a “silkworm” as it is a kind of mollusk. They cannot understand why the poet compares the beautiful love with a disgusting worm. We can easily put “春蚕” into “silkworm” in English, but silkworm does not arouse the same emotion nor have the same function in the TL. It becomes an ordinary word, which does not play any role in reinforcing the theme of the poem. Similarly, “月光 (moonlight)” is the embodiment of hometown in the hearts' of Chinese, so it appeared in so many poems, such as “露从今夜白，月是故乡明” (杜甫《月夜忆舍弟》)，“海上升明月，天涯共此时”(张九龄《望月怀远》) and “床前明月光，疑是地上霜。举头望明月，低头思故乡”(李白《静夜思》). But “moonlight” in English has no such meaning. Instead, according to Oxford Advanced Learner's English-Chinese Dictionary, there is a phrase “do a moonlight flit” that means, “leave a place quickly, secretly and at night to avoid paying one's debts, rent, etc.”. Thus when these images are directly translated into the TL, the same association and emotion will not be aroused among the TL readers as the original ones do among the SL readers. The differences between cultures always pose an obstacle to translation. Culture-default and meaning-default are inevitable in translation process. However, in most cases these defaults can be compensated. In other words, they are relatively untranslatable.
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