Aesthetics In The Translation Of The Ancient Chinese Poetry

"Poetry is to express one's will," and poetry is a kind of perfect combination of both formal and spiritual beauty. Poetry translation, especially the ancient poetry translation from Chinese to English, is one of the most difficult tasks in the field of translation.Since the ancient poetry is the most outstanding representative of Chinese literature and culture and it bears extreme beauty not only in sound, but also in form and meaning, translators should take the responsibility of reproducing the beauty to the greatest degree so that it can be better understood and appreciated by English-speaking readers. Therefore, the combination of translation and aesthetics has aroused attentions among translators and scholars in recent years. Owing to years of hard work of translation researchers, translation studies have been developed into a trans-disciplinary subject and translational aesthetics is being researched about attentively.Aesthetics has a long history both in China and in the west, but in the respective of translation, it is still a new subject for all the translators. In order to transfer the aesthetic value of the ancient Chinese poetry into English, we should make further study in the relationship between translation and aesthetics and try to find proper ways to translate the ancient Chinese poetry into English. In this thesis, the author probes into proper ways to translate the ancient Chinese poetry on the basis of translation theories both in China and in the west, that is translational aesthetics.This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter I is the general introduction, in which the study questions will be raised and the aim and significance of the study will be introduced. In Chapter II, the author analyzes the aesthetic theories in translation both in China and in the west, which offer sound theoretical basis for the further study in this thesis. Chapter III is about aesthetics in the translation of the ancient Chinese poetry. In this chapter, the general rules, feature and beauty of the ancient Chinese poetry are presented to the readers firstly, and then the author explores aesthetic objects and subjects in poetry translation. Chapter IV discusses aesthetic methods of transferring the beauty of ancient Chinese poetry—the transference of the beauty in sound, form and meaning by analyzing a few examples and hence searches for proper ways of translating the ancient Chinese poetry into English from the aesthetic perspective. Chapter V is the conclusion of the whole thesis. The major findings, limitations and suggestions are put forward in this chapter.