Features of Chinese Translation of Emily Dickinson's Poetry: A Comparative Study of Wang Hongyin's and Tu An's Translations

Abstract

The research on translation of Emily Dickinson’s poetry has gradually attracted attention from scholars at home and abroad in recent years. But so far, comparison and evaluation of different translations are mostly based on subjective impression and less on objective empirical study. A statistical analysis of formal factors such as stanza, line, punctuation, and vocabulary use in 200 Poems of Emily Dickinson translated by Wang Hongyin and I Know He Exists translated by Tu An is performed with the help of programs written in Python language to objectively compare and summarize translation style of the two translations, and to reveal some of the features of current Chinese translation of Emily Dickinson’s poetry. It is found that the two translations deviate slightly from the original in terms of stanza and line number. On the whole, Tu’s translation deviates less from original text, its use of translation language and punctuation are very close to original text, with only occasional adjustment to original line and word sequences, its overall style is plain and smooth. Wang’s translation deviates relatively greater from original text. Lots of alterations are made to original punctuation, its diction incorporates more translator’s own understanding of original poems, many modal words, onomatopoeia and er-hua words with characteristics of northern dialect, etc. are added, and omits original sentence elements frequently, all of which resulting in a translation with distinctive translator’s personality and diverse language styles.