A Comparative Study On The Aesthetic Representation Of The Two English Versions Of Biancheng

Biancheng, written by Shen Congwen, a notable Chinese writer, is the closest literary work to the Nobel Prize in Literature in the mainland. It is not only a splendid nouvelle but also a comely, elegant and woeful pastoral which expresses the writer's deep affection about his hometown—Fenghuang, a small city in west Hunan Province. Since its first publication in 1934, the study on it has undergone more than seventy years, during which scholars both at home and abroad have done a lot of researches. As for its translation, so far there have appeared two English translations of the work, one is The Frontier City translated by Ching Ti and Robert Payne and published in 1947; and the other is The Border Town translated by Gladys Yang and published in 1981.Shen Congwen is good at creating lyric fiction. Imbuing the reality with his heart-felt subjective feeling, he creates a realm beyond image with great aesthetic values—the frontier town through the hannonious fusion of scene and emotion. Hence, it is safe to say that the study on the aesthetic value of the translated versions of Biancheng is of great significance. Whether the translated works may gain after life in the target culture depends largely on whether the translators can represent successfully the original aesthetic value for the target readers. Therefore, how to reproduce the mysterious and poetic realm poses a great challenge for the translators.Though the scholars at home and abroad have done some research on Biancheng, there are relatively few in-depth and systemic studies on its translation, still less from the perspective of translation aesthetics. In view of this, the present thesis attempts to make a systemic study of Biancheng from the perspective of translation aesthetics.The integration of literary translation and aesthetics is of perfect marriage. Aesthetics is a subject intended to examine beauty and human's sense towards beauty, while translation aesthetics is an intermediary discipline mediating between aesthetics and translation studies. Since literary work is a concrete expression of art, its unique aesthetic characteristics determine that the aesthetic values in it and its translations can be analyzed in the light of aesthetics. With translation aesthetics as a systematic whole, and Biancheng as a pastoral with superb aesthetic value, the unity between them seems a natural marriage. The author of this thesis holds that there is still much room to explore in this regard. This paper applies Liu Miqing's theory of translation aesthetics to the comparative study on the aesthetic analysis of the original and the two translated versions of Biancheng. The author makes a study on the aesthetic representation in the translated versions from two aspects: aesthetic representation of the formal aesthetic values, which include the reproduction of the beauty of sound, lexes and syntax; and aesthetic representation of non-formal aesthetic values, which include the representation of image and artistic ideorealm. Besides, the author also examines how the aesthetic object and aesthetic subject reach harmony in the process of aesthetic representation. Besides, the author also examines how the aesthetic object and aesthetic subject reach harmony in the process of aesthetic representation. Through the comparative study on plenty of examples selected carefully from the translated versions, the paper analyzes the merits and demerits in them and, where necessary, proposes its own adjusted versions. The author discovers that on the whole, both versions are satisfactorily handled, although Glady's version is a little bit better than that of Ching's in terms of aesthetic flavor. Of course, to err is human, so there is still some room for improvement in their translations.This thesis bears the purpose of bringing a fresh insight into the study of the translation of Biancheng. The author attempts to use aesthetic theories to guide the study of translation theory and activity, and proves that translation aesthetics can be an operative vehicle for appreciating the aesthetic constituents and assessing the translation product. It serves not only as a guiding criterion, but also an aesthetic yardstick by which to measure whether a translation is good enough or not, which is certainly helpful to the translation criticism and translation practice. Many aesthetic problems in translating are closely related to aesthetic criteria for translating. Knowledge of the features of the aesthetic criteria is conducive for us to do translation practice, evaluate the aesthetic constituents and reach a proper aesthetic judgment on the translated works.