Book: Linguistic Explorations in Translation Studies
Chapter: Quoting-reporting in English translations
Blurb:
In Chapter 11, we investigate the issue of quoting-reporting in English translations of Tang poems. We first briefly review the theoretical concept of quoting-reporting and differentiate quoting, reporting, direct speech, and indirect speech. Then we analyze the instances of quoting-reporting in some English translations of Tang poems. Finally, we discuss the problems we find in the analysis. Based on our comparison, we suggest that when translating quoting-reporting elements in Tang poems, translators should first take “formal equivalence” into consideration and meanwhile try to avoid using direct speech.