【正文】 ese culture, have endeavored to recreate the beauty of Chinese Tang poems in other languages, it should be admitted that in the translation process of those poems, some sticky problems or barriers would be encountered. These problems or barriers are going to be discussed in the following parts of the thesis, falling into three categories, namely, sound untranslatability, form untranslatability and sense untranslatability.2. Untranslatability Definition of untranslatabilityTalking about the untranslatability of Tang poems in English translation, one thing must be firstly made clear: what untranslatability is. One definition is that “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 es the issue of untranslatability” ().Another similar saying is: “Untranslatability is a property of a text, or of any utterance, in one language, for which no equivalent text or utterance can be found in another language” ().According to , an English theorist of linguistic translation, the property of untranslatability can be separated into two types: linguistic untranslatability and cultural untranslatability (Pu Hongying, 2006). On the one hand, the untranslatability caused by language itself such as the language structures, is called linguistic untranslatability. For example, the Chinese expression “我姓張, 弓長(zhǎng)張” is not translatable, because in the Chinese semiotic system, the characters “弓” and “長(zhǎng)” are the two elements of the character “張(in pinyin: Zhang, a family name in Chinese)”, but in the English semiotic system, “張” is written in pinyin “Zhang” which can no longer be seperated into two meaningful elements like “弓(bow)” and “長(zhǎng)(long)”. One more example is: “客上天然居 / 居然天上客”. In Chinese, the ten characters of the two lines are arranged in the same order from left to right as that from right to left. Such a kind of text with a so ingenious language structure is undoubtedly a headache for translators. On the other hand, the untranslatability caused by the culture of the nation who speaks the language is named cultural untranslatability. Take “杜鵑”(cuckoo) and “龍”(dragon) for examples. Since the association meanings of “杜鵑”, “龍” in Chinese culture and “cuckoo”, “dragon” in English culture are quite different, there is scarcely equivalence between them in translation when they are used for expressing not only a referential meaning but also an associative meaning, although they can be literally equivalent.To sum up, from one language to another, there is a language nature that is referred to as untranslatability, which is a big problem in the process of translation. Untranslatability in literatureAs to the untranslatability in literature, there have been many discussions on it.First of all, to translate is to find equivalence. Nida emphasizes on the “functional equivalence” and states a minimal, realistic definition of functional equivalence as “The readers of a translated text should be able to prehend it to the point that they can conceive of how the original readers of the text must have understood and appreciated it” (2001: 118). In terms of literature translation, there is a saying that the target language text should produce the same kind of literary effect as the source language text. In the words of Mao Dun, literary translation is to express the artistic meaning in another language and give the target language reader the same enlightenment, passion and aesthetic feeling as the source language text would give the source language reader。卻看妻子愁何在，漫卷詩(shī)書(shū)喜欲狂。 鄉(xiāng)(xiāng)。ng).According to the rules of creating Chinese classical poetic positions, fivecharacter and sevencharacter metrical poems have respectively four basic tonal patterns to follow (Yang Zhongyi, Liang Baoli, 2000: 115). They are listed as below:Fivecharacter poems:① 仄(oblique) 仄(oblique) 平(level) 平(level) 仄(oblique) 國(guó)(gu243。i)② 平(level) 平(level) 仄(oblique) 仄(oblique) 平(level) 城(ch233。) 限(xi224。ng) 昏(hūn)Sevencharacter poems:① 平(level) 平(level) 仄(oblique) 仄(oblique) 平(level) 平(level) 仄(oblique)濃(n243。ng) 薇(wēi) 晚(wǎn)② 仄(oblique) 仄(oblique) 平(level) 平(level) 仄(oblique) 仄(oblique) 平(level) 細(xì)(x236。n) 青(qīng) 山(shān) 相(xiāng) 對(duì)(du236。) 邊(biān) 來(lái)(l225。shi requires antithesis in the two pairs of lines in the middle of a poem. Both lines in each pair should be matching to each other in tonal patterns and in the arrangements of functional and notional words. For instance, “大漠孤煙直，長(zhǎng)河落日?qǐng)A。舉頭望明月，低頭思故鄉(xiāng)。ng”(in Chinese pronunciation), but actually they have different meanings: “晴” means “sunshine” while “情” means “affection”. Another example is “春蠶到死絲方盡，蠟炬成灰淚始干”. Here the word “絲(in pinyin: sī)” puns on the word of “思(in pinyin: sī)” which means “missing somebody” but not “silk” (the meaning of “絲”). Causes of untranslatability of Tang poems in English translationChinese language and English language are two languages after all. Since they are from two unlike language families, there are notable differences between them. Consequently, some problems of untranslatability either of linguistic or of culture, will be encountered in the process of rendering Tang poems into English. The causes of the untranslatability can be simply divided into three: cause in sound, cause in form and cause in sense. Cause in soundFirstly, Chinese and English are dissimilar in sound.All Chinese characters are singlesyllable but it is not the same case with all English words, most of which consist of two or more than two syllables. Thus the totality of syllable binations in Chinese is much smaller than that in English。遙 憐 小 兒 女，未 解 憶 長(zhǎng) 安。Your jadewhite arms would feel the cold moon beams.O when can we stand by the windowside,Watchin