2018 Volume 3 Pages 1-
This paper aims to clarify the translatability of poetry through the translation language of modern Chinese poetry. In translation of poetry, metaphor should be rendered creatively, while the original meter cannot be transferred precisely into the target language. This makes the translatability of poetry a critical issue. In the 20th century, both Japan and China have been influenced by European modern poetry, especially by French symbolism and surrealism. In contemporary China, modern poetry was revived at the end of the 1970's after the Great Cultural Revolution. Contemporary Chinese poetry was first introduced into Japan in the late 1980's and has continued to spread over the several decades since this revolution. Walter Benjamin asserted that the radical mission of translation is dedicated to the realm of pure language on the philosophical side of poetry translation, while Roman Jakobson attempted to explicate poetry from linguistic points of view and defined the poetic function in linguistic terms. This paper describes the findings through the empirical analyses of the translation language of Chinese modern poetry, focusing on both philosophical and linguistic facets.
