A Comparative Study of Three Translated Versions of a Chinese Poem "Yu Beauty" Based on Theme/Rheme Theory

According to Halliday, language is a social semotic system, which constitutes the resource of meaning and the vehicle of meaning potential. Theme/rheme theory constitutes one of the important theories to analyze the textual structure. Based on this theory, this paper attempts to conduct a comparative analysis of the Chinese poem Yu Beauty and its English versions to see how different translators construe the poem and develop their translations differently, with an aim to offer a new perspective for the appreciation of poetry translation based on the Theme/rheme theory. Meanwhile, this study proves that the Theme/rheme theory is of great applicable value in the analysis of the original poems and appreciation of poetic translation, rendering it one of the important linguistic skills in research as well as practice of Chinese-English translation of Chinese classic poems.