Abstract: Untitled poems ,valued as the gems in classical Chinese Tang poetry ,have always gained prominence and popularity through the ages. To translate the untitled poem would make the charm of Chinese culture visible to the West.By now ,there are many English versions of the untitled poem. This paper , by comparing the English Version of the Poems " Untitled" by Li Shangyin,tranlated by Xu Yuanchong, ZhangYanshen ,Wei Bosi ,Tang Zhengqiu,and A.C.Graham. The author tries to explore the complexity and the artistry of the translation of poetry. Each of the English Version of the Poem "Untitled" has its advantages and shortcomings in terms of thinking,features,characteristics, the overall style of rhetoric,and so on. So the author attempts to analyze these differences from the translation of poem, through comparative study on the English version of the Poem " Untitled" by Li Shangyin ,the author also provides some valuable ideas for improving the ability of appreciating the ancient poems in China so as to it’s tranlation.
Keywords: untitled, poem translation,comparison
Tang poems ,valued as the gems in classical Chinese poetry,have always gained prominence and popularity through the ages. Noticeably,with the efforts of translators of both at home and abroad ,Tang poems ,including Li Shangyin’s poems ,are successfully translated in English culture as well,thereby making the charm of Chinese culture visible to the West. Nevertheless,the task of translating Tang poems still meets with great challenges.This is partly due to the fact that poetry translation is an art of choice,especially Li Shangyin’s poems. As Li Shang-yin (812-858) was the first poet to write obscure poetry. It is very difficult to translate his poems into English for his language is poetical while the English ,on the contrary, is a scientific language. Science requires clarity and precision, but no obscurity. Also because of the translating process is therefore unavoidably subject to the translator’s subjectivity, which is tangled with the process of transformation,semantic transmission or cultural translation and the vastly cultural differences between the East and the West, western readers can hardly appreciate the great essence of Chinese classical poems .
