5 Conclusion 21

5.1 Major Findings 21

5.2 Suggestions for Both Majors 21

5.3 Limitations 22

Acknowledgements 23

References 24

List of Tables and Figures

Table 2.1.1 Poem Translation Strategies 5

Table 2.2.1 Translation Error Types 6

Table 4.1.1 Results of Poem Translation Strategies 9

Table 4.3.1 Results of Translation Errors 15

Figure 4.1.2 Results of Poem Translation Strategies Used on On Death 10

Figure 4.1.3 Results of Poem Translation Strategies Used on Why 11

Figure 4.1.4 Results of Poem Translation Strategies Used on On His Seventy-fifth Birthday 11

Figure 4.3.2 Results of Translation Errors on On Death 16

Figure 4.3.3 Results of Translation Errors on Why 16

Figure 4.3.4 Results of Translation Errors on On His Seventy-fifth Birthday 17

1 Introduction

1.1 Research Background

Poem translation is a difficulty in translation field. However, in recent days, it has attracted more and more interest. Generally, English majors are thought to have a good command of both Chinese language and English language, while Chinese majors are thought to grasp Chinese language well. Hence, in translating English poem into Chinese, who would do a better job, the English major or their Chinese counterparts? English majors may excel Chinese majors in understanding the English language, but Chinese majors may have better skills at poem writing in Chinese. An experiment is designed to find out the answer. Though the evaluation of the quality of poem translation does not have a very clear standard, the basic evaluation rule is the quantity of poem translation strategies and translation errors. The more strategies students use and the less errors they make, the higher quality their translated poems have. This study will focus on the translation strategies used by both English majors and Chinese majors in translating the same English poems, trying to find out their differences in choosing translation strategies. In addition, it also tries to find out how the two majors differ when making errors. By probing into the above issues, this study aims to help both English majors and Chinese majors improve their poem translation quality.

1.2 Significance of the Study

First, previous studies paid more attention to the poem translation from the academic perspective; for instance, some investigated and compared the translation strategies put forward by famous translators (e.g. Lin & Liu, 2009; Luo, 2012). Others showed the limitation and the history of poem translation (e.g. Chen, 1999; He, 2000). This study focused more on the practical use of poem translation strategies

Second, both majors can benefit from the comparison by comparing the performance of poem translation of English majors and Chinese majors.

1.3 Structure of the Thesis

The thesis is comprised of five chapters. The first chapter serves as an introduction, presenting the research background, significance of the study, and the overall structure of the paper. Chapter two includes a review of related theories on poem translation strategies and some investigations on translation errors. It is followed by the methodology part, which introduces the specific research questions, and describes the participants involved, the instrument adopted, and the ways the data are collected and analyzed. The next chapter reports the findings obtained from data analysis and discusses the possible reasons that might lead to these results. The last chapter is a summary of major findings, some suggestions for English majors and Chinese majors, and the limitations of the study.