On Reproduction Of Beauty In Birch's English Version Of The Dramatic Verse In The Peony Pavilion From The Perspective Of Translation Aesthetics

Mudan ting(The Peony Pavilion), the most famous dramatic chuanqi of the eminent playwright Tang Xianzu, is generally considered as a brilliant flower in the history of kunqu with beautiful and poetic language, touching tune and a tale of extreme love that transcends life and death. Meanwhile, the text of the play Mudan ting is regarded as the greatest of all classical Chinese dramatic literature. Whoever reads it will commend its literary language, especially the dramatic verse in it. The beautiful and smooth dramatic verse (or aria) actually belongs to the genre of poetry. It is very beautiful literary language.Based on Chinese contemporary translation aesthetics, the thesis makes a tentative study on reproduction of beauty in Birch's English version of the dramatic verse in Mudan ting. Translation aesthetics, a translation theory with striking national characteristics, explores the significance of aesthetics to translation. From an aesthetic perspective, translation is the representation of the original aesthetic value. As far as the study of translation of literary works is concerned, their special aesthetic characteristics determine that translation aesthetics is an essential approach to studying the original beauty and its reproduction in the translation. The essence of classical Chinese dramatic literature lies in its aesthetic characteristics. The author of the thesis believes that it is significant to explore the literary translation, especially the English version of beautiful language of the dramatic verse in Mudan ting from the perspective of translation aesthetics.According to aesthetic point of view, the research objective of the thesis should be the representation of the original aesthetic value and in which way this value is reproduced by the translator to entertain the target readers aesthetically. To be brief, the core part of the thesis is to dig out WHAT the original beauty is and HOW it is transferred. Based on the essential part of translation aesthetics, the research of the aesthetic value is conducted from two aspects: one is presentation constituents including sound and sentence form and the other is non-presentation constituent with the ideorealm as the focus.Through a detailed comparison between the source text and the target text, the research reveals that Professor Birch succeeds in reproducing the beauty of the dramatic verse in Mudan ting in his English version. It turns out that though Birch cannot make his version possess exactly the same musical quality as the original; his compensative means help to reproduce the auditory beauty. Similarly, the beauty in sentence form is reproduced. In addition, as far as the reproduction of beauty of ideorealm is concerned, which includes ideorealm of a beautiful woman, beautiful scenes and feelings, his preservation and literal transfer of aesthetic images are of great help. On the whole, the strategy of foreignization adopted by Cyril Birch who is keen to bring the target readers to appreciate the beauty of the classical Chinese dramatic literature proves successful.Through the study of reproduction of beauty in Birch's C-E version of dramatic verse in The Peony Pavilion from the perspective of translation aesthetics, the thesis aims to display the beauty of the source text and target text. Aesthetic activities, the significant part of human beings, enable us to have delight in life. Therefore, it is far from enough for literary translators only to convey the sense of the original, they should also utilize their own literary accomplishments and transfer the aesthetic value of the original to let the target readers experience its beauty. Also, the author hopes that the thesis can arouse more interests in the study of the translation of classical Chinese dramatic literature.