Rhythm Reproduction in English Translation of Chinese Poetry: A Contrastive Analysis of Li Bai's “GUAN SHAN YUE”（关山月）and its English Version

Abstract

This paper contrasts the rhythm of Li Bai's “GUAN SHAN YUE”（关山月）and that of Fletcher's English version “The MOON OVER The PASS” and finds out the functional equivalence between the Ping (平) and Ze (仄) (level and oblique tones) of Chinese poetry and the lightly stressed and heavily stressed syllables of English poetry, the number of Yan (言) (the number of characters) and the number of feet, and the rhymes. To promote the realization of musical beauty, formal beauty and emotional expression in the translation of Chinese poetry and reproduce the rhythm of ancient Chinese poetry, five-character and seven-character poem with regular line can be translated into iambic pentameter; pre-Tang poem and Song Ci with irregular line can be translated according to the analogy of character and syllable, and the feet of the translated poem can mainly be iambs; the rhyme of the translated poem can be couplet rhyme, cross rhyme or alternate rhyme. Based on this strategy, the author translates her self-created poem “MAN JIANG HONG ZHAN YI”（满江红·战疫）into English to prove the feasibility of the rhythm reproduction strategy of the English translation of ancient Chinese poetry.