A Beauty Among Flowers

The Romance of Western Bower, written by Wang Shifu in Yuan Dynasty is a gem in the treasure house of Chinese literature. It teems with far-reaching influence, profound thoughts, exquisite artistry and splendid languages. Among them, the refined and graceful language is the main reason to make this drama"a beauty among flowers", which bears the beauty in meaning, in sound and in form. For a long time, several translators, foreign or domestic, have been engaging in translating this Chinese classical drama and made great contributions to introducing this immortal heritage of Chinese literature to the world. Like other Chinese poems and verses, the lyrical translation in this work is characterized by its artistry and subtlety. The Chinese and English languages belong to different languages family and there exists different cultural and linguistic backgrounds between china and the English-speaking countries, the task of conveying the original beauty of Romance in meaning, in sound and in form without discarding its spirit is a tough work.Professor Xu Yuanzhong made remarkable contribution to Chinese poetry translation, so far as the quality and quantity of his translation and translation theory are concerned. What is more, combing his experience of poetry translation, he set forth"three beauties"principle---"beauty in meaning, beauty in sound and beauty in form on poetry translation, which has won numerous praises and aroused heated debate, for the principle stresses"beauty", especially"beauty in sound"is not sometimes in consistent with"faithfulness"which is the main stress of the mainstream of traditional Chinese translation theory.The author of this thesis chooses his translation of Wang Shifu's The Romance of the Western Bower as a subject matter, to analyze its excellent application and flaws in this work and to summarize systematically Xu Yuanzhong's"three beauties"on poetry translation and his poetry translation practice from multi-aspect and multi-perspective, makes tentative analysis on his translation practices which he applied his"three beauties"principle to find its creative theoretical value and its practical significance. On the basis of study on Xu's translation of The Romance of the Western Bower, and the debate on his"three beauties"principle on poetry translation, the thesis offers some suggestions an making an objective and impartial judgment on Professor Xu's poetry translation theory and his translation of Romance. Through examples given in the thesis the author points out that it is true there exist some drawbacks in Xu Yuanzhong's poetry translation practices. However, most parts of his translation realized his own"three beauties"principle and achieved much success. His consummate skill is worth learning from and taking as reference. His useful attempts on both poetry translation theory and practice are undoubtedly beneficial for further development of Chinese literary translation.