An Easthetic Perspective Of Ba Jin's Translation Of The Happy Prince And Other Tales

The publication of the little book The Happy Prince and Other Tales in 1888 brought the Irish writer Oscar Wilde to the world of letters in his time. Though Oscar Wilde remained a quite controversial figure due to his personal life which was open to rumors, his fairytales won him universal praise. The five stories in The Happy Prince and Other Tales are written in beautiful and pure English, and the moral contained in the stories is presented in a manner that is wittily natural. With a pioneer in aestheticism in the 1800's as the author, Wilde's fairytales are considered the perfect vehicle to embody his aesthetic ideal. The excellence of these stories, however, adds much more difficulty to the job of reproducing their beauty in another language thus makes it rather challenging.Ba Jin, a literary giant in modern China, undertook the arduous task of translating those gem-like stories into Chinese in the 1940s, and fulfilled it in the year 1947. Ba Jin's accurate interpretation of the original and his solid foundation in Chinese enabled him to get as near as possible to the message that Wilde intended to pass to the reader. Reading Ba Jin's version of Wilde's fairytales, the reader would feel as if talking to the original author himself. Owing to Ba Jin's protracted and unremitting efforts, the Chinese readers at large are able to appreciate and enjoy those marvelous tales more at ease.This thesis aims at offering an aesthetic perspective of Ba Jin's translation of Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince and Other Tales. Viewing from the aesthetic perspective, Ba Jin acted as the aesthetic subject, whose language ability, aesthetic experience, aesthetic consciousness, aesthetic feeling, etc, all play a critical role in the aesthetic activities that take place during the translation process. Part One is the introductory part, in which we can get a general idea about the features of The Happy Prince and Other Tales and Ba Jin's contribution to its popularization in China. In Part Two, a detailed analysis is made on Ba Jin as the translator of The Happy Prince and Other Tales, about his talent in language, his perseverance in carrying out the task, his aesthetic interest, aesthetic attitude, and aesthetic feeling as well. Part Three focuses on the appreciation and discussion of the beauty in the original as well as in its Chinese version. The discussion, exemplified with examples, involves three aspects, namely the representation of the beauty in language, in image, and in style. Part Four, which is the last part, is the conclusion to the discussion put forward in this thesis. Through the analysis of Ba Jin's translation of The Happy Prince and Other Tales, we find that translation of literary works should not stop at transmitting the logic information of the source text, but should take the representation of the aesthetic information as its final goal.