Transmission and Reconstruction of Yue Regional Cultural Images in the International Dissemination of “The Tang Poetry Road in Eastern Zhejiang”

Abstract

The Tang poetry along “The Tang Poetry Road in Eastern Zhejiang” contains three categories of Yue regional cultural images: natural landscape, humanistic history, and folk life. This study constructs a corpus of multiple English translations of Li Bai’s poems, comparing the transmission of Yue regional cultural images in the English translation process. It is found that translators mainly adopt translation strategies such as transliteration/literal translation plus annotation, free translation, amplification, omission, and substitution. However, due to linguistic barriers, cultural heterogeneity, and differences in translators’ aesthetic preferences, these images often suffer varying degrees of loss and mistranslation. Accordingly, this paper proposes reconstructing Yue regional cultural images from three dimensions: linguistic symbols (footnotes, endnotes, and paratexts), non-linguistic symbols (illustrations and real-scene photographs), and cross-cultural narration (replacing with similar cultural elements in Western contexts). These strategies aim to preserve the core of Yue culture while building a bridge for cross-cultural understanding, helping Western readers empathize with the poetic charm and humanistic connotations of the Yue region.