On Reproduction Of "Three Beauties" In C-E Translation Of Classical Poetry

Poetry is a type of literary genre with the most polished and tersest language as well asthe richest connotations. It is the unity of beauty in sense, in sound and in form. Both Englishand Chinese languages boast long history and a wide variety of turns of expression, and thepoems in the two languages are invaluable treasure for the people all over the world. However,English and Chinese peoples have distinctions in their thought patterns and aestheticperceptions; meanwhile, poems in both languages differ from each other in their metricalconventions and characteristic forms. How to make target readers fully appreciate the poetry'sbeauty in sense, in sound and in form so as to make the translation appeal to the ear, the eyeand the heart, therefore, becomes a goal pursued by every translator.China is a nation of poetic compositions. Verses, ditties, odes and songs have beenhanded down from generation to generation by elites who are talented in prosodic writing.Nearly every Chinese emperor or king could compose poems or artistic prose in the ancienthistory of China. Mao Zedong, the late Chairman of the People's Republic of China, was anexpert in poetry. His poems are classical in style and with resourceful subject matters and areextremely rich in their sense, so that some of them have often been recited or quoted both athome and abroad. His poetry, a model of the combination of Chinese classical romanticismand revolutionary realism, carries forward the glorious tradition of Chinese poetry andpossesses the nature and significance of proletarian revolution. His poetic writings have beentranslated into various foreign languages since the early 1940s and are spread all over theworld. To translate Mao's poems is to introduce its poetic art, Mao Zedong Thought andChinese culture. There are about 20 English versions of Mao's poems and each of themdisplays its merits. Of all these translations, Professor Xu Yuanchong's version is a classic. Asa distinguished translator of poetry, Prof. Xu has been devoting himself to the translation ofclassical Chinese poetry for decades of years, through which his pursuit for perfection isrevealed. His "Three Beauties" theory, namely beauty in sense, beauty in sound and beauty inform, serves as guiding theory for poetry translation. This thesis makes a study of histranslated version of Selected Poems of Mao Zedong in the three-beauties aspects, aiming toshed some light on the English translation of classical Chinese poetry and gear the literarytranslation towards a healthier course.This thesis consists of six chapters:Chapter 1, the introduction, briefs the theme and the basic structure of this thesis.Chapter 2 makes a comparative study of the characteristics of Chinese and Englishpoetries from the perspectives of sound and meter.Chapter 3 introduces the three major schools of classical Chinese poetry translationamong contemporary studies as well as their theories and translated works, and discusses thetheories put forward by a representative of metrical verse school, Professor Xu Yuanchong. Chapter 4 is an introduction to Mao Zedong's poetry, including its major characteristics,its status in modem Chinese literature and its English versions at home and abroad.Chapter 5, with the "Three Beauties" theory as its basis, gives an in-depth analysis of theSelected Poems of Mao Zedong translated by Prof. Xu from such perspectives as thetranslation of titles, tune names and color words, handling with images and figures of speech,as well as reproduction of meter and rhyme and equivalence in form. This chapter is the coreof the thesis, in which the author elaborates her personal understanding and point of view.Chapter 6 is a brief conclusion, which presents a clear sketch of what has been discussedin previous chapters and points out the limitations of this thesis and directions for futurestudy.