An Analysis Of Hawkes' The Story Of The Stone From The Perspective Of Translation Aesthetics

Aesthetics has special meaning for Chinese translation theory ever since the activity of translation came into being in China. Because for Chinese, language function is inseparable from aesthetic judgment. Generation after generation, many translators contributed a lot to the Chinese traditional aesthetic translation theory. Professor Liu Miqing has made great effort to develop China's own modern aesthetic translation theory, in which he applies the traditional Chinese aesthetic theory in guidance of translation. According to Professor Liu, literary translation is to use the target language to reproduce the aesthetic constitutes of the original works, thus it has the process of aesthetic experience and aesthetic representation. Representation performs as the core of aesthetic judgment, which is to transform source text mainly in the aspects of literary beauty and artistic style. This study explores on the translation issue with the focus on the aesthetic representation in Davie Hawkes'English version of The Story of the Stone. The thesis begins with a brief review of the development of aesthetic translation theory in both China and the West, and then the theoretical foundation of the thesis; some basic notions in contemporary translation aesthetics. In Chapter Three analyses will be given firstly on the aesthetic of HLM, then the main patterns of the representation adopted in Davie Hakwes'version, and two aspects of representation, namely literary beauty and scene beauty of the original work. With the reference of concrete examples analysis, the thesis shows the importance of representation in literary translation. In that sense, Davie Hakwes'version provides us with a perfect example of aesthetic representation of literary work.