Ablation And Retainment Of Fuzzy Beauty In C-E Translation

"Traduttore Traditore" (translation being treason),this world-knownItalian saying hits the nail on the head in describing the dilemma of translation.It can be said that translation is considered as a cause full of regret,i.e.usually the translator can only enjoy the beauty of the source text by himself/herself because of the dramatic differences in language, history and aesthetic notion. Therefore, it is really difficult to transfer completely the beauty of the source text into the target language and such translation regret will protrude more in referring to the transference of language fuzziness because fuzziness is one of the intrinsic and important characteristics of the natural language.Moreover,the root difference between Chinese and the Western Indo-European languages lies in language fuzziness,where rightly lies the merit of Chinese.Chinese emphasizes on the integrated effect and stresses on paratactic expression without pursuing careful analysis and strict logic, so Chinese is a certain language for artistic conception. In contrast, English takes on the opposite scenery:it is hypotaxis-dependent,analysis-based and logic-oriented,even taking "symbolic logic" as its formal beauty,disregarding the integrated effect. Consequently there inevitably arises the ablation of the fuzzy beauty in the process of C-E translation,which means no more than to look on helplessly the ablation of fuzzy beauty of Chinese while being translated into English.Therefore,to deal well with the transfer of language fuzziness in the source text turns to be especially important.Although quite a few scholars in China have realized and mentioned the significance of it in translation, especially in literary translation,so far no monograph on the ablation of the fuzzy beauty in C-E translation has ever been published in the translation circles. This thesis is only a preliminary and superficial study on this subject.Moreover,Reception Aesthetics,which was popularized in the 1960s and caused a shift of the focus of literary theory from the author-work pole to the text-reader pole,emphasizes on the reader's understanding of,response to and reception of the literary works and stresses on the subjective dynamics of receptors.Therefore,this theory plays a macro instructive role in translating and accepting the literary works.The literary works are usually described with descriptive and fuzzy language which implies many meaning "indeterminacies" and meaning "blanks" or "gaps" and constitutes "the appealing structure" of the literary works.Language fuzziness may embody itself in the lexical level,syntactical level and textual level etc.and provide the literary works with inexhaustible superb beauty and charm which can exhibit themselves with different visages from different angles by virtue of its aesthetic effects, i.e.beauty of appropriateness,beauty of conciseness, beauty of preciseness,beauty of artistic conception,beauty of humor and beauty of image. Consequently this leaves space for readers to ponder independently,to imagine freely and to "chew" happily and therefore enhances the aesthetic values of the literary works.Shuihu Zhuan,one of "Four Great Ancient Classic Works",is a fantastic flower in the wonderful art garden of China and is a good representative works which successfully makes the advantage of language fuzziness.Shuihu Zhuan is so famous at home and abroad that it has been widely spread alter having been translated into different foreign languages.However,it is regretted that the study on its English translation has been seldom undertaken in China so far.For the above mentioned reasons, the author will undertake a tentative study on the English translation of Shuihu Zhuan from the angle of language fuzziness to analyze the ablation and retainment of the fuzzy beauty in C-E translation from the perspective of Reception Aesthetics.In this thesis, the author first introduces the notion of language fuzziness and makes tentative comments on the aesthetic value of Shuihu Zhuan.Then the author offers an overview on language fuzziness and the studies on it home and abroad and provides a macro analysis of the aesthetic effects of language fuzziness in Shuihu Zhuan. The author also introduces the Reception Aesthetics and elucidates the relationship between language fuzziness and the "appealing structure" or the "horizon of expectation" based on the reception of Shuihu Zhuan.Following this the author makes a tentative discussion on the aesthetic differences of language fuzziness between Chinese and English and explains the root reasons which bring about such differences from three angles. On this basis, the author introduces the translation regret—the ablation of the fuzzy beauty in C-E translation.Herewith the author first makes a macro comparison between English versions of Shuihu Zhuan from the perspective of Reception Aesthetics and then analyzes from the angle of language fuzziness on the ablation of the inexhaustible fuzzy beauty in C-E translation of the nicknames and on those ablation in the lexical level,the syntactic level and the textual level based on Outlaws of the Marsh translated by Mt. Shapiro.In the end the author turns to elucidate the occasional retainment of the fuzzy beauty in English version of Shuihu Zhuan and therefore proposes the tentative requirements on the translators for maintaining the fuzzy beauty as much as possible in the process of C-E translation. The author also expresses her minor enlightenments on the relationship between better translations of the literary works and the Nobel Prize for Literature.