OnUntranslatabilityofArtisticConcept

On Untranslatability of Artistic Conceptionin Chinese Classic Poetryfrom Long Longing

1 Introduction   

Poetry is the oldest form of culture. It is the crystallization of age, history and culture. As everyone knows, Chinese Classic Poetry (CCP) is not only the conjunction of the national culture, but also the combination of reality and ideal, time and space, sensation and reason and sentiment and education. It always delivers artistic conception to people’s hearts by a convergent artistic form. It seems a resplendent dripping flower, ardent and profound.

    Some scholars, writers and translators home and abroad define poetry in several ways. Emily Dickinson once said: “If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off I know that is poetry”.（米云辉，2004：7）Poetry, one of the oldest and perhaps the most primitive form of literature, is also the most refined and delicate of literature genres. Thomas Nash appraised that “poetry is the honey of all flowers, the quintessence of all science, the narrow of wits, and the very phrase of angels”.（米云辉，2004：7）These two famous elites both regarded poetry as a complex of minds and emotion. Some Chinese great writers have the similar definitions. Zhu Guangqian said: “poetry is a pure literature with temperament” (朱光潜，1984:51） while Lin Yutang had the opinion that “poetry is, in essence, a thought colored with emotion.” (林语堂，1998:43) Many people think that poetry, in a general sense, may be defined as the expression of the imagination. Poetry is an abstract literary form, so the possibility of poetry translation becomes a long-debated issue in translation circle. At first, we’d better look into the purpose of poetry translation.

Poetry, as the inheritance of human culture, interests people around the world. Appreciation of poetry may help people from another country to have an insight into another culture. As a result, translation of poetry plays an indispensable and important role for those who aim at translating poetry from one language into another successfully. The charm of Chinese Classical Poetry (CCP), the mainstream of Chinese poetic works, has interested so many people. Thus a great number of international scholars and translators who are interested in Chinese Culture have endeavored to recreate the beauty of CCP in other languages. This shows there is no denying that it should be translated.

Because of the necessity of translation of CCP, there may arouse another problem, that is, whether CCP can be translated. Translatability and untranslatability have long been disputed in the area of translation study. Throughout thousands of years of translation history, there were many scholars, writers, thinkers and even translators all over the world, who suspected and even denied the translatability absolutely. As far as poetry is concerned, the problem of translatability is more controversial. Poetry is far more difficult to translate as compared with other forms of literary works. Whether a poem can be translated or not is still in debate. There are some opinions that can favor the untranslatability of poetry. An American poet Robert Frost maintained, “Poetry is what gets lost in translation.”  Another poet has the similar explanation of this. Shelley, the famous British poet also held that “it were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principles of its color and odor, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet”(Bassnett etal, 1989: 58).

It can be concluded that a language is the outward manifestation of the spirit of people, so to speak their language is their spirit, and their spirit is their language, you cannot go too far in thinking of the two as identical.

The German translator Humbolt also stated that there is no proper way to convey the original spirit. He argues that “words are not agreed-upon signs but rather sounds which, together with the things and concepts they represent and through the spirit in which they originated and continue to originate, exist in true association—in mystic association, these sounds contain the objects of reality broken up into ideas and able to establish, separate and link them in a way which can not be bounded by the mind”. (1989:59)This is the reliable theoretical evidence.

In the Chinese translation circle, there are also similar views on untranslatability of poetry. Lin Yutang in his On Translation once quoted Croce’s words “all the pure artistic works are untranslatable,” and he also added “The top poems (especially lyric poems) are untranslatable, be it Chinese or western, ancient or modern”. （周仪, 1999: 68）The reason is that it is the load of the elite words of a specific language, and if it acts Zhou Zuoren once said when he translated several Greek Poems in 1924 “poems are untranslatable, only the original text in source language can be named as poems; the others are all the explanation of the poems by different translators” (周仪, 1999: 68).

In conclusion, the literary style of the source text is untranalatable, for the medium of translation is language. Different languages have no ways to express the same literary style. The expression of the literary style is like imitating watercolor pictures in pencil or pen, and it can not reflect the literary style of the source text.

To sum up the opinions of previous scholars or translators, we can find something in common in their opinions—some writings are untranslatable such as poems. Once poems are translated, the specific taste that is the soul of the poem always disappears. Without its specific taste, poems can hardly be called “poems”. In one word, there exist some features that are difficult or even impossible to be translated from one language into another language, which is always considered as “untranslatability” by earlier translation scholars.

It should be admitted that in the translation process of CCP, certain problems or barriers would be encountered. It is because, for one thing, the abstruseness of the Chinese archaism and the very terseness of the traditional way of writing poetry make it difficult to comprehend the implications. For another, because Chinese is an ideograph language, the form and the meaning of a poem are so often integrated with the Chinese characters that it is not possible to translate them into another language accurately. In addition, on the level of polysemy, symbolism, frequent use of artistic images, anecdotes and allusions, CCP is particularly untranslatable to some extent.

2. Comparison between Chinese and English Version of Long Longing

Nowadays, there are many translators commit themselves to translation of poetry, but there arouses many problems. Let us compare the Chinese and English version of Long Longing to realize the untranslatability of artistic conception. The following part aims at finding out what is lost in Chinese Classic Poetry Translation.

Chinese Version of Long Longing:

长相思

汴水流，                   思悠悠，

泗水流，                   恨悠悠，

流到瓜洲古渡头，           恨到归时方始休，

吴山点点愁。               月明人倚楼。

English Version of Long Longing:

Long Longing

Waters of Bian flow,

Waters of Si flow,

Flow to the old ferry of Guachow,

The hills in Wu bow in sorrow.

My grieving seems to grow,

My longing seems to grow,

Grow until comes back my yokefellow,
We lean on the rail in moonglow（赵彦春，2005：95）

Reading the Chinese version, we know that this poem describes a lady misses her lovers, leaning on the rail in moonglow. In the hazy moonglow, the hills and rivers greeting in her eyes are full of sorrow. The first three “flows” describe water sinuous, brewaging lingering charm. The following two “grows” add to sorrow. The whole poem expresses love with recentness, expressing the complicated feeling of characters with smooth and fluent words, harmonious rhythm. Especially that stream of moonglow foils the atmosphere of sorrow, strengthening artistic beauty, revealing the features of that simple words, resourceful meaning, easing understandability and profound significance.

But some of these reflected in the Chinese version can not be conveyed completely in the English version of this poem. A person who read it without any knowledge of its background, especially the reader who was born and grow up in another culture, can he taste all the flavor of the poem? The poem set in the war, because of the war, the lady was parted with his husband for a long time. This poem posts the fact that war brings pasture between relatives or lovers, so all people hope it comes an end. Without this background, the foreign readers can not taste the deep theme of the poem. The two rivers in the poem are Bin Flow and Si Flow. Why the author chooses these two rivers as yearning rivers? This is because these two rivers flow to the ocean without turning around. It also stands for the lingering yearning and sorrow goes without twisting. The old ferry Guachou always implicates a bleak feeling, such as sorrow or lovesick. The lady leans on the attic, missing his husband. In the past, women were not allowed to stay out without any necessity. And in the past, Chinese architecture always have that kind of design with an attic or aisle. All these culture can not be read only in the English version of the poem. In the English version of the poem, the word “bow” of the sentence “The hills in Wu bow in sorrow” is not supposed to be translated to “bow”. In the Chinese version, the poem would like to express sorrow which filters to hearts little by little, deeper and deeper. But in the English version, “bow” is a verb, expressing feeling on the surface. It leads to visual rigidity, idealistic ossification, and aesthetic languishment and so on.

By comparison, we see that there are something lost in the translation. What are they? We bet to say that they are some abstract minds and emotion such as philosophy, thought, aesthetics and so on, so artistic conception of poetry can not be translated.

3. Untranslatability of Artistic Conception in CCP

The above example shows that artistic conception in CCP is untranslatable. And we know that the artistic conception is the essence of the original, so in this section, we will mainly discuss the artistic conception in details.

3.1 Most Important Element in CCP Translation

Poetry may be seen in terms of various elements working together towards an integral whole. Each element represents only part of the overall design and it is this design that must remain in the main concern. To arbitrarily, isolate the diverse elements is somewhat going against the true spirit of poetry. Regarding Poetry translation as a semantic equivalence, media symbol with the same information, to convey another language is a narrow translation notion. Poetry translation standards are decided by the meaning which is implied and aesthetic value in the intent framework of the poetry, artistic conception of CCP becomes the spirit of Poetry translation. That is to say, Poetry translation relies greatly on the intrinsic quality of itself. In the rendering process, if the original elements of the poetry are changed, the internal beauty may be violated. So translation os artistic conception is a difficult and important issue.

Burton Raffel, an American professor, argues that the aesthetic requirements should be an eternal pursuit in Poetry translation. The last chapter of his book, the Art of Translating Poetry, especially poetry translating, is the art of keeping balance between various requirements. Though many people think that the language requirements are of great significance on the part of the translator, Raffel argues that “the most significance and difficult requirement lies in the aesthetic requirement”. “The translated poem,” he says, “should first the aesthetic requirement, the flavor of life. Although there are a lot of requirements, the aesthetic requirement should be highlightened—this is an eternal pursuit ”. (1990:37)

Artistic conception is a very general quality in poetry. Well-received poems are invariably “artistic conception” intense; poems, which may scan well are never thought too much of, if they are empty of artistic conception.

From mentioned above, artistic conception in CCP should be regarded as the eternal pursuit and the most important element which should be translated.

3.2 Artistic Conception

Artistic conception as the difficult and important element of poetry, needs the careful analysis to help us deal with its untranslatability.

3.2.1 Definition of Artistic Conception

What is artistic conception? Zong Baihua says: “It regards the embodiment of astro-life as the objective and appreciates its essence, order and harmony. It is the deepest reflection of one’s self. By converting true scenery into virtual scenery and creating image to symbol, the most gracious hearts of human are embodied. This is so called ‘artistic conception’. It mainly depends on beauty.” （1981：89）

Nowadays, people always think that “artistic conception is an artistic bourn of complex between the described objective view and expressional thought and sentiment. It has the aesthetic features of allusion combined with concrete, meaning harmonized with bourn and abstruseness which are able to make readers have imagination and association, facing the true or concrete environment and affected in their hearts.” （Thomas, 1999:2453）Simply speaking, artistic conception is a poetic space created by scenery and affection in the readers’ minds or a comprehensive aesthetic bourn created by combination of objective image and scene. Some artistic conception can only be sensed but can not be conveyed completely by another language.

Having observed the physical appearance or layout of a poem, one gathers much impression from its artistic conception. Artistic conception, in poetry, is closely associated with the tone, the aesthetic feeling and the mood of a poem. Therefore, a great step to correctly translate a poem is to understand the tone of the poem, to sense the obviously or subtly conveyed feelings in the poem.

Xu Yuanchong defied artistic conception that “it is the synthetic product of life, scenery, thought and feeling. It is also the unification of feeling, substance, meaning and bourn”. (2001:41)The subjective feeling syncretizes objective substances. The bourn is in the meaning and the meaning is revealed in the bourn. “Artistic conception” is the unification of “meaning”, “feeling”, “philosophy” and “bourn”、“form” and “scenery”. It is also the unification of objective scenery and subjective sentiment.

To sum up, the artistic conception of poetry is the agreement of the poet’s strong feeling and vivid objects. It is the artistic bourn which is not the same as real life but can be trusted. It is the complex of sensation and scenery or the combination of form and spirit which both are created in artistic expression. From the philosophical view, it is regarded as the reflection of thought and exist or the results of subject and object. It is the unification among them. From the aesthetic view, “sensation” in the poetry includes the author’s feeling and philosophy. “Bourn” means the spirit and form of the object. So artistic conception is the harmonious unification of these four elements——sensation, philosophy, form and spirit. Artistic conception is the essence of the CCP. Conveying the right the artistic conception is the point of displaying the spirit of the poetry.
3.2.2 Expressional Techniques of Artistic Conception

This part states three expressional techniques of artistic conception.

3.2.2.1 Association and Imagination

There is no poetry without imagination and association. The readers master the artistic conception of poetry by grasping the described scene and atmosphere, especially using association and imagination. We have to imagine the concrete, vivid and visual pictures which are expressional by exquisite language. These scenes are the reflection of the poet’s careful observation, experienced imagination and emotion release to reality.

Let’s take the poem of Long Longing as an example. In the poem, the sentence “Flow to the old ferry of Guachow, The hills in Wu bow in sorrow.” (“流到瓜洲古渡头，吴山点点愁。”) And “My grieving seems to grow, My longing seems to grow, Grow until comes back my yokefellow, We lean on the rail in moonglow.” (“思悠悠，恨悠悠，恨到归时方始休，月明人倚楼。”), It is full of imagination and association. Where is the ends of the two rivers? Is it Guazhou? Does the Wu Hill have sorrow? We have no idea. Is there someone leans on the rail and misses her husband? It is unknown. How were these sentences created by the poet? The answer is association and imagination. By this means, the poet associated the end of the two rivers is Guazhou and imagined the Wu Hill has emotion. He described the picture of the woman as if he saw the true scene.

3.2.2.2 Self-experience

Any kind of feeling of human is from their lives. The poets created their poems by using the daily materials in their lives.

Bai Juyi, the poet of Long Longing, lived in the Tang Dynasty. So the set of the poem was chaos caused by war. People hated the war and long for reuniting with their relatives and lovers. The ruling class at that time was punk. The poet was upright and care about sufferings of people. From the above, we know that the whole poem was created on history, the author’s experience and so on.

3.2.3.3 Reflection of the Poet’s Thought and Feeling

The world of poetry is the world of thought and feeling. Poets always release their thought and feeling in their creation. So we have to grasp these two elements of the poets. Here we need to know the basic modes of combination of feeling and scenery in CCP. They are feeling expression while seeing the scenery, direct expression, feeling bailment to scenery and bringing out the best to each other between feeling and scenery.

When people translate Long Longing, they should get a general idea of the poet, that is to say the author’s thought and feeling. We can get these from the poet. The thought of the poet Bai Juyi is the integration of Confucianism and Taoism. Doing things is in accord with the directing thought of Confucianism that giving a hand to people of the nation when you get rich and being good to people even when you are poor. The ideal of his “helping the others” is on the basis of humanity of the Confucianism and the thought of Lao zi and Han Feizi. The thought of solitude is from Zhuang Zi. The Chinese expression is indirect, but the English Version seems more direct. We have to create the artistic conception of poetry according to the poet’s emotion.

Generally speaking, these are the representative methods of creating artistic conception. As long as we grasp the techniques of the creation of artistic conception, it is easy for us to study the reasons of untranslatability of artistic conception in CCP. After comprehending of artistic conception, we need to get the general knowledge of untranslatability to extend our topic.

3.2.3 Definition of Untranslatability

The Longman Dictionary says: “it is impossible for the translators to find the exact equivalents for some certain language phenomena, such as the internal beauty, mental conception, thinking methods, inner feeling, different culture, and so on. We can not convey all the elements the same as the source of the text, the aim of the primary author. Therefore here comes the issue of untranslatability.”(许海峰，2003：1582). After the general grasp of untranslatability, we’d analyze what causes it.

3.3 Causes of Untranslatabilty of Artistic Conception

This thesis intends to analyze the causes for untranslatability of artistic conception we mentioned above. They are association and imagination, life experience and poets’ thought and feeling,.

3.3.1 Untranslatability Due to Different Spirit and Thought Pattern

Spirit, as one aspect of culture, refers to what people think, including the patterns of thought, values, worldviews, aesthetic sentiments etc. It also includes the products of people’s thinking, such as philosophy, literature, history; paintings, sculptures and so on. And custom and system culture means the ways of life and social organization. These two belong to the category to ideology and always filter into each other, so it’s hard for people to distinguish them sometime and there is usually no sharp borderline between them.

Thought pattern, or pattern of thought, means the usual way in which people tend to use in their thinking. It is formed under the influence of its culture. People of different cultures have different characteristics in terms of thought pattern although they have a lot in common. Even different people think in their own particular way, and the differences between thought patterns may be much greater among people from different culture. For example, people who speak English think that there is direct links between thoughts and ideas and the real world. So they attach great importance to reason and logic and they believe if they follow the correct steps of logic, they can find truth. They tend to think in an analytical way. Chinese people, however, tend to think in a synthetic way.

The difference can also be reflected in language. Chinese thought pattern thinks much of the integration, figurativity and suggestibility of language while western cultures think much of the analyticity, logic and structuralization of the language.

The way of thought and spirit always has differences between each other. Philosophical beauty of spirit is always an obvious point of brightness. For example, Picking Chrysanthemum written by Tao Yuanming, it reflects the philosophy that inaction of Lao Zi. In Wang Wei’s Poems, it always reflects being not sought fame and wealth, cultivation and so on. Architectural beauty of thought is also revealed in CCP. For example, when we read some love poetry, maybe we imagine some places just like pavilions, but when people in other nations read these poems, they maybe imagine Gothic buildings or other places. You can imagine the vague frames of the buildings when you read these poems. They can be grand or pastel and so on.

By comparing the Chinese and English version of the poem Long Longing, we mentioned in the second part that in the different versions there are some ways of different thoughts. It has something to do with what mentioned in the following.

Aesthetic judgments in Chinese old ideology all originate from traditional aesthetics. Traditional aesthetics also originate from traditional Confucian aesthetics and syncretize with the thought of Lao Zi, Zhuang Zi, metaphysics, Buddhism and zen during its development. It has developed a system of aesthetics which differs from that of west. The core of Taoist philosophy is “harmoniousness”—people give the way to nature and introject into it. Zhuang Zi’s theory of that “all creatures grow up with me together and all of they and I can amalgamate as one thing provide a philosophical premise for the aesthetics of artistic conception which is “substances and people coexist”, “the subject and object incorporate”. The content of the thought of “advancement and retreat, syncretization between nature and human” is different from that of Taoism. It pays more attention to the experience in nature. In the meantime, it cares about the harmonious relationship between human and nature. From Qing and Han Dynasty, the thought of Confucian, Taoism were planted in Chinese cultural genes. It is used in creation of poetry widely. Just like some people said: “the form of Chinese wits is not only an ability of thinking or rational pattern, but also a witty pattern of thinking which can be called artistic mental structure.” The main part of the artistic mental structure includes artistic conception. It influences the field of our CCP. Although the influences of traditional philosophy have already been declined, as an injection of culture with several thousand years, the thought of Chinese is unavoidably influenced by these two thoughts of philosophy. They have injected to heads and lives of our Chinese, and will pass on endlessly.

3.3.2 Untranslatability Due to Different Life Backgrounds and Styles

We know that history is one of the factors of untranslatability of artistic conception of CCP. There is a saying that Chinese poets always were born answer for the age, and they also are the reflection of that age. The theme of their poems derives from the reality, the ruling class, ordinary people and so on.

In addition to the factors discussed above, life ways are also factors that will affect the translation of artistic conception and cross-cultural communication. They originate from a certain religious culture. It also differs from that of another culture in many ways. The difference of religions between different cultures would be directly and indirectly reflected in the people’s language, communication and behaviors and cause untranslatability in translation. In Long Longing, The way to express sorrow is to miss someone endlessly and lean on the rail to wait for a person day after day or year after year. But when English are under this situation, they may act differently. They may not express their sorrow or bitterness as rivers, hills or that kind of things but as some furious matters which can express their feeling or emotion strongly.

3.3.3 Untranslatability Due to the Poet’s Thought and Feeling

Another factor which will affect artistic conception translation and cross-culture communication is the difference between values, aesthetics and attitudes of different cultures. These belong to another important branch of culture, which can be called the value system. The value of a certain culture is a set of behavioral standard for people to make choices and solve conflicts and it is usually displayed in its people’s philosophic and moral concept. It instills into its people, through certain infection, the standards of good and evil, truth and false, correctness and wrong, beautiful and ugliness, etc. to make it clear what they should learn, what they should criticize and what they should defend as well.

    The poet’s thought and feeling are from many aspects, it is also related to

reality and ideal. Bai Juyi, the famous poet of Tang Dynasty, was built his thought and his own spirit by the surroundings. He learnt Confucianism, Taoism and so on, so his thought and feeling sometimes can be traced to them. This principle is applicable to the main example in this essay.

4 Theoretic Bases of Untranslatability of Artistic Conception in CCP

    Analysis in details needs general theoretical bases to complete and consolidate. It is generally held that untranslatability has its roots deep in the cultural differences. We know that human species originated in regions isolated from one another, so human culture—the byproduct of human evolution naturally bears some distinct regional features. Differences in mankind’s culture and thinking have thus come into being. The said differences have their most obvious manifestation in language is the tool with which a human being gives vent to his thought and describes his culture. Consequently, many language phenomena particularly embedded in a specific culture.

Sapir put forward his theory for this issue. He asserted in 1929 that “the ‘real world’ to a large extent is unconsciously built up on the language habit of the group. No two languages are ever sufficient similar to be considered as the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached”. (马春梅，2004:6—7) Sapir’s student Whorf extended his position in the 1930s into a theory known as the “Sapir-Whorfian hypothesis”. In its most extreme version, the “Sapir-Whorfian hypothesis” can be described as the following. That is people who speak different languages perceive and think about the world quite differently. On this basis, the Whorfian perspective is that translation between one language and another is at the very least, problematic, and sometimes impossible.

On the foundation of this hypothesis, it is obvious that some elements are untranslatable, especially in cultural specification which they all contain connotations.

5 Solutions to the Untranslatability of Artistic Conception

Now that artistic conception is untranslatable, what should we do when the CCP were delivered to other English-speaking countries? We should find good ways to reduce the distortion during the translation.

5.1 Poetry Translation According to Particular Background

We know from the above analysis that history is one of the factors of untranslatability of CCP. There is a saying that Chinese poets always were born answer for the age and they also are the reflection of that age. The theme of their poems derives from the reality, the ruling class and ordinary people and so on. For example, the set of the poem was chaos caused by war. People hated the war and long for reuniting with their relatives and lovers. The ruling class at that time was punk. The poet was upright and cares about sufferings of people. From the above, we know that the whole poem was created on a particular history, feeling and so on.

5.2 Poetry Translation According to Spirit and Thought Pattern

Internal factors are also important elements in CCP translation. Grasping the connotation of the poem and translating it into another language without any confusion are important jobs. Let’s take Long Longing for example again. When people translate this poem, we should get a general knowledge of the abstract factor, that is to say the spirit and thought pattern. We can get these from the poet. The thought of the poet Bai Juyi is the integration of Confucianism and Taoism. Actions are in accord with the thought of Confucianism. It is giving a hand to people of the nation when you get rich and being good to people even when you are poor. The ideal of his “helping the others” is on the basis of humanity of the Confucianism and the thought of Lao zi and Han Feizi. The thought of solitude is from Zhuang Zi. The Chinese expression is indirect, but the English Version seems more direct.

5.3 Poetry Translation According to Aesthetics

We know that poetry are also full of beauty, it has something to do with music, paintings, architecture, philosophy and so on. When poetry is translated, we can create an artistic bridge among them. We should translate it with the right and familiar symbol in the other language.

6 Conclusion

Poetry is the most sublime and concentrated literary genres; it demands freshness in artistic conception. The translation of poetry observes general translation theories and attaches great importance to the conveyance of aesthetic effect of the original.

In poetry translation circle, different people have different opinions on possibility of poetry translation. Especially for CCP, most translators, writers and scholars make efforts to maintain the original flavor of it. Because this is a special culture of China, it is the quintessence of Chinese wits. It has the task to deliver the glory of China with a five thousand-year history. Delivering the right flavor of CCP, it is also helpful for foreigners to understand our culture better and shorten the distance between each other. This cultural bridge is favorable for promoting our understanding and friendship.

By adopting integrated perspectives, the thesis analyzes the untranslatability of CCP according to the concrete example.

First, this thesis begins with a general introduction of poetry and the untranalatability of CCP. In this part, firstly, it states the necessity of CCP translation——CCP is the wonderful cultural fortune. It is interested in people home and abroad. Then it points out that the main problem of CCP translation is untranslatability of artistic conception, and it states some poets, scholars or translators’ views to favor that poetry can not be translated, especially its artistic conception. Because CCP is the oldest literary form and artistic conception is its core, it reflects man’s heart and soul. It is also the picture of man’s senses and imagination. If the artistic conception is reduced or disappears, poems can not be called “poems”. In the second part, by comparing the Chinese and English version of Long Longing, we find that this kind of feeling is reduced after translating, some even disappears. We call “what is lost in the CCP translation” as “artistic conception”. Part three mainly discusses three problems. First, from some views of experts in translation circle, we know that artistic conception is the very general quality in poetry and the most important aesthetics requirement in CCP translation. We should be regard it as the eternal pursuit. Second, it analyzes artistic conception in details. And it finds three reasons for untranslatability of artistic conception. They are different thought pattern and spirit, different life backgrounds and styles and the poet’s thought and feeling. In the forth part, it cites Sapir’s words and Sapir-Worfian hypothesis as its theoretical bases. The centralized perspective is that artistic conception translation in CCP is impossible because of the cultural specification. In the fifth part, it concludes there are three solutions to untranslatability of artistic conception according to the above mentioned causes. The last part refers to the importance of CCP translation and reviews the whole thesis. It concludes there are several methods to deliver the artistic conception of CCP as much as possible, such as (1) following time and space, (2) reviewing the ideal and reality, (3) feeling in your heart. The solutions mainly focus on background, thought and aesthetics.

From the thesis, we know that artistic conception of CCP can not be delivered completely during its translation. But we can seek common points while reserving difference to find the cultural joint to smooth the CCP translation and deliver the Chinese culture to the whole world.

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