Aesthetic Studies On Lu Xun’s "Better Faithful Than Fluent" From The Perspective Of "Defamiliarization"

Lu Xun is not only a forerunner of modern literary translation,but also a discerning literary translation theorist.As for the translation practice,it is no doubt true that Lu Xun is a prodigious translator having translated 244 foreign works by 110 authors from 15 different countries in just 33 years’ translation career.In his time when translations and creative works were scant,The Rout,Dead Souls and among a series of other works translated by Lu Xun have provided rich intellectual nourishment for the generation of man of letters and radiate artistic values even in today’s literature.As regards the translation theory,after drawing on fine traditional insights into translation theories and dispensing with the dominant liberal translation as well as “distorted translation”,Lu Xun creatively advanced “better faithful than fluent” in the 1931 which shed a new light on literary translation.In his time and even present-day,there has been rather harsh criticism on Lu Xun’s “better faithful than fluent”.After a systematic study,the author believes that“better faithful and fluent” can be an effective esthetic principle for literary translation which embraces rich artistic elements.Zheng Hailing once mentioned that from the perspective of defamiliarization,it would be easier to recognize that Lu Xun’s “better faithful than fluent” is an artistic principle.Enlightened by Zheng Hailing,the author comes to realize that this principle comes very close to defamiliarization advanced by Shklovsky and they share a similar aesthetic mechanism for artistic appreciation.The present study attempts,however,to explore the aesthetic significance of “better faithful than fluent” from the perspective of defamiliarization,namely the exoticism pursuit.Specifically,this principle effectively allows for the representation of vivid images,profound emotions,linguistic differences and a series of other esthetic elements of the original.And finally the author explores in some details theacceptability of “better faithful than fluent” in the light of “Zhong Yong” pursued by Chinese traditional “novelty”.