Artistry Reproduction In Poetry Translation Of Hong Lou Meng From The Perspective Of Translation Aesthetics

Hong Lou Meng,the capstone of Chinese classics,is not only an encyclopedia of traditional Chinese culture,but also an epitome of the artistry of Chinese language.It has been translated into many foreign languages and spread all over the world since the 19^th century.It is recognized worldwide that,so far,the English versions of David Hawkes and the couple of Yang Xianyi and Gladys are the most authoritative and classical.Poetry,a special type of literary genre,boasts high aesthetic value.The number of poems in Hong Lou Meng,according to the statistics,reaches over 100,from which it can be seen that the poems play an important part in Hong Lou Meng.It is out of estimation that,in particular,the special rhetorical devices including prophecy,homophony,pun,allusion,metaphor and etc are quite significant in enhancing the aesthetic value and the artistic features of Hong Lou Meng.Chinese is quite different from English both in the aspects of language and culture,so the artistry delivery of poetry translation is hindered undoubtedly.However,it is the permanently resplendent artistry of the poems as well as the complexity of poetry translation that determines the extremely high research value of the poetry translation of Hong Lou Meng.In this thesis,Liu Miqing’s translation aesthetics is employed to probe into the artistry reproduction of the poetry translation in Hong Lou Meng through researching the authoritative English versions.Translation,according to the translation aesthetics,is a process of reproducing aesthetic objects by aesthetic subjects.Therefore,the artistic features of the poems in Hong Lou Meng both in the aspects of form and non-form systems including rhymes,diction,sentence patterns,meaning delivery,image construction and style manifestation are firstly analyzed from the perspective of aesthetic objects.Then,the root causes of the artistic losses of poetry translation in Hong Lou Meng,by analyzing the classic examples of authoritative versions,are investigated from the angles of aesthetic subjects and aesthetic objects,namely,the fusion gaps between the two languages,the expression inclination of intermediary translators and the limitations of reception system are going to be explored.And then,effective translation strategies for the artistry reproduction of poetry translation are summarized.On the one hand,the translators,to a certain degree,are able to adopt form and non-form imitation to reproduce the artistic features of the source text on account of the hierarchic artistry of the poems in Hong Lou Meng.On the other hand,the target readers,for the integrity of the received information,can improve the reception system to receive information optimally.Finally,the main findings of this research are summarized through systematic analysis.Firstly,it can be found that,according to the noumenon property of aesthetic objects,the artistry reproduction of the poetry translation in Hong Lou Meng presents the trait of hierarchy.Secondly,the untranslatability,to some extent,cannot be removed in the poetry translation of Hong Lou Meng,especially the artistic features that can only be demonstrated by Chinese may suffer greater losses during the process of language transformation.Thirdly,although the artistry reproduction of poetry translation in Hong Lou Meng is suffocated by aesthetic subjects and aesthetic objects,aesthetic subjects can take effective compensation strategies to recreate the artistic traits of the source text to the highest degree,which will be beneficial to provide reference for the general poetry translation.