On The Gestalt Quality Of Beauty In Lin Yutang's Chinese-English Translation

Lin Yutang, a renowned scholar, writer and translator, has enjoyed a great international reputation. His Chinese-English translation, with smoothness and lucidness, presents a panorama of unique Chinese culture to the western world, exerting a remarkably far-reaching influence on the western readership. This study combines his full translation of Six Chapters of a Floating Life and his selected translations of classical Chinese poems and essays included in his English writings to have a holistic survey.The field of translation studies has borrowed and absorbed the knowledge of other disciplines to accelerate its own development. The source text and the target text are not mechanical correspondence, but the formulation and transformation of gestalt schemata. The gestalt quality of a text refers to a complex, multi-dimensional unitary structure consisting of linguistic meaning and aesthetic expression. The success of a translation largely depends on the translator's holistic representation of the gestalt quality of the original. This study borrows some important principles from Gestalt Psychology, especially the principle of the whole, the law of similarity and the law of closure, to analyze Lin Yutang's Chinese-English translation. The law of similarity suggests that one tends to group similar items together as a gestalt; the principle of the whole, the basic principle in Gestalt Psychology, emphasizes that the whole is more than the sum of the parts; the law of closure indicates that if something is missing in an otherwise complete figure, one will tend to add it, namely, one tends to complete the incomplete experience.These three principles are adopted in this study to discuss Lin Yutang's choice of the source texts, his cognitive schema and his blank-leaving translation technique respectively. Through a close analysis, this study claims that the great success and influence of his C-E translation is greatly due to the gestalt quality of beauty of the translated texts, namely, the beauty of freshness in thoughts and style, the beauty of wholeness in artistic conception and the beauty of flavor in aesthetic effect.The first chapter provides a literature review of the studies of Lin's translation, introducing three important principles of Gestalt Psychology, namely, the law of similarity, the principle of the whole and the law of closure, and their applications in translation studies. The second chapter mainly discusses Lin's choice of the source texts from the perspective of the law of similarity. Lin chooses the original texts according to the similarity between his life philosophy and ancient Chinese philosophical thoughts in the source texts, between his view of literature and literary style of the original. Then the ancient Chinese philosophical thoughts and literary style reproduced in his translation group together to form the freshness of the unique Chinese culture, thus presenting to the target readers the gestalt quality of freshness. The third chapter explores, from the perspective of the principle of the whole, the translator's cognitive schema, which lays the foundation for his representation of the total artistic conception in the original. This principle is embodied in his view of writing, fine art, and most importantly, his translation theory, so that with the wholeness in his mind, he can holistically represent the whole linguistic meaning and aesthetic expression of the original. Therefore, his translation represents to the target readers the gestalt quality of wholeness in artistic conception, providing them with a great aesthetic pleasure. The fourth chapter deals with Lin's blank-leaving translation technique from the angle of the law of closure. Being fully aware of the aesthetic effect of the implicit blanks in literary text, especially Chinese poetry, he reproduces the brief diction and vivid images of the original, leaving the blank spaces in the target text, so that the gestalt quality of flavor is presented in his translation to the target readers to stimulate their imagination and give them a great aesthetic pleasure. The last chapter makes a conclusion about the new findings, significance and limitation of this study and thoughts on future study of Lin Yutang's translation.