Research on the Translation of Du Fu's Poetry in the BBC Documentary "Du Fu: China's Greatest Poet" from the Perspective of Variational Translation Theory

Abstract

Poetry is rich in cultural imagery and complex rhetoric, making cross-cultural translation extremely challenging. The BBC documentary "Du Fu: China's Greatest Poet" introduces Du's poetry into the Western cultural perspective, aiming to discuss how classical Chinese poetry can be disseminated and reconstructed in cross-cultural contexts, so that the world can have a deeper understanding of the poet and Chinese culture from Du Fu's original intention, thoughts and other aspects. Based on Professor Huang Zhonglian's "Variational Translation Theory", this paper analyzes the linguistic characteristics of Du Fu's poetry in the documentary, explores the translator's linguistic transformation, the subtleties of diction, and cultural recreation in the translation process, and discusses the role of the three elements of translation in Du Fu's poetry in terms of the connotation and emotion, the translator's subjectivity, and the translator's fidelity. We discuss the role of the three elements of translation in the connotation and emotion of the original work, the subjectivity of the translator and the diversity of faithfulness in Du's poetry, and explore the effective dissemination of Du's poetry in a cross-cultural context.