Rhythm Is the Meter: A Poetic Interpretation of Wen Yiduo's Translation of Sonnets

The poet-translator Wen Yiduo played a key role in the history of translating sonnets into Chinese.This paper explores the poetic motivation behind his sonnet translation, taking as an example the translator's handling of such poetic elements as rhyming, line formation, image construction and rhythm in his translation of a sonnet by Elizabeth B.Browning.The poetic interpretation shows that the translator's poetic idea of "rhythm is the meter" exerted a strong manipulative power upon the whole translation process, and his attempt to represent the original metrical form, the rhythm in particular, reflected his poetic intention of rebuilding the form of Chinese poetry.Wen Yiduo's translation of sonnets functioned positively and greatly in the establishment of the metrical form of Chinese New Poetry, which is the very value of this translation event in the history of Chinese literature.