A Study On The Aesthetic Translation Of Literature From Cultural Semiotics Theory

Cultural world is the symbolic world. It is combined of a series of symbols. From theperspective of cultural semiotics to research literary translation, it requires us not only tostudy the structure of language itself, but also focus on the relation among language systemand other subsystems of culture system and the interaction mechanism between them.Both Roland Barthes and the founder of the famous Tartu-Moscow Semiotic SchoolJuri Mikhailovich Lotman are the representatives in the research of Cultural Semiotics.Barthes advocated to analyze the inner process of producing meaning through the symbols.His semiotics thoughts is not only promoting the development of the semiotics itself, butalso promoting the research of literary and culture studies. Lotman’s semiotics research isbased on the text, and his research scope covers language, social reality, history, spirit,psychology, culture and other aspects. In his view, the text is as the basic element of theresearch of cultural symbols, which has the functions of memory, transmission and creation.Any kind of cultural phenomenon suffers the support and bound of text function.Although it portrayed Chinese society and culture in Moment in Peking in English, thewriting process is a creative process of translation from Chinese into English. Lotman, whowas the outstanding figure of Cultural Semiotics, thought the semiotic thinkings whichbased on the text should be concentrated on the dynamic scan of the text function. Heemphasized on the investigation on the text which should cover all the ingredients of thelanguage symbols. It provided a very good guidance for translation aesthetics, whichrequires the translator can not lose the cultural connotation in the works when they creatingtranslation at the same time. This thesis tries to analyze the translation of Moment in Pekingto make a deep research on the strategies of the translation aesthetics.