A Study Of Three Chinese Versions Of Wuthering Heights-From Perspective Of Aesthetic Reproduction

Literary translation aims at reproducing the artistic conception of the original text. Aesthetics studies the subject of art. Translation aesthetics is the combination of translation theories and literary aesthetics. It focuses on the artistic reproduction of the original literary works. As an aesthetic activity, its aesthetic feature shows in two aspects: first, it reproduces the artistic entirety of the original work; second, it is a creative activity. It involves the translator's subjectivity, the exertion of which reflects the aesthetic value of the original work. The activity of literary translation is the process of aesthetic creation including comprehension, empathy, communication and representation. Literary translation is a kind of art, but it also differs from art. It is an activity of artistic creation, but its creativity has its own restriction. Its dependence on the original text confines the artistic creation of the translator.Translation theory has been tightly bound to aesthetics in the history of the West and China. In the West, the aesthetic tradition of translation developed from Cicero, Jerome, Dryden, Tytler to Goethe. It was a dispute between word-for-word translation and sense-for-sense translation. While in China, the combination of translation and philosophic-aesthetics experienced four stages: source-text orientation, faithfulness, closeness of spirit and sublimation. It was a conflict between plainness and refinement. After years of development, modern aesthetic translation has preliminarily set up a framework of aesthetics, involving aesthetic subject, aesthetic object, aesthetic activities and aesthetic standard. Aesthetic constitution of aesthetic object consists of presentation constituents and non-presentation constituents. The former is determinate, reflecting in phonology, language structure and rhetoric; while the latter is indeterminate, reflecting in the fuzziness of language, style and image.Wuthering Heights, written by Emily Bront? in the 19th century, has been regarded as the most unique novel in British literature since publication. It is a unique lyric poem, filled with rich imagination and violent emotion. Its impact of art is overwhelming. This paper, based on the theory of modern aesthetic translation,is to study the three Chinese versions of Wuthering Heights, including Yang Yi's version published by Jiangsu People Press in 1980, Zhang Ling and Zhang Yang's published by People Literature Press in 1999 and Fang Ping's published by Shanghai Yiwen Press in 2000. Through the analysis of the reproduction of the aesthetic constitution of the original text in the target text, it tries to study the role of translator's subjectivity in the aesthetic representation of literary translation.