On The Visibility Of Rhetoric Devices

This research attempts to conduct an analysis on the visibility of rhetoric devices in the translations of Tao Te Ching. The theoretical framework comes from aesthetics and a comparative research is carried out between Tao Te Ching by Laotse and its two English translations respectively by Lin Yutang and Arthur Waley.Visibility in this paper is defined as the opposite of invisibility proposed by Venuti. To visualize the language beauty of the source text in the translated version, it focuses on reproducing such language effects as literary information, poetic form and cultural view. Visibility is significant in translation because it enables the translated text to catch reader’s attention with explicit form and resonates with their receptive interest in the literary textuality of source text. What’s more, it can help readers to capture the language beauty more easily. Finally, it brings both the translation and translator into readers’horizon of expectation to avoid marginalizing and even hiding translating devices as invisibility does.In the present study, the discussion about visibility mainly unfolds on the level of rhetoric devices. Rhetoric device is one of the most outstanding textual properties of Tao Te Ching, where linguistic effects are enhanced through modifying, word adjusting and exquisite ways of verbalizing. Rhetoric device contributes to the language beauty, which indispensably renders this book both a literary and philosophical canon in Chinese classical tradition.This study is aimed at exploring the visibility of rhetoric devices and how the translators succeed in creating the visible effects. For the convenience of analyzing the abstract concept of visibility, the research tentatively categorizes rhetoric devices into three subcategories according to the standard of aesthetics and the manifestation of rhetoric devices:Beauty of Language in Sound, Beauty of Language in Connection and Beauty of Language in Harmony.This comparative study focuses on analyzing the two versions by Lin Yutang and Arthur Waley to explore the ways of reproducing the visibility of the effects engendered by rhetoric devices. Owing to his reasonable interpretation of the language and the visibility of the rhetoric devices in the source text, Lin Yutang succeeded in reproducing the language beauty in the translated version. On the level of language beauty in sound, Lin Yutang applies three effective translation strategies to the reduplication and repetition:word repetition, alliteration and rhyme. On the level of language beauty in connection between things, such as metaphor and contrast, two methods adopted by Lin Yutang are effective to create the visible effect. They are the right connection between the tenor and vehicle in the metaphor and strategy of compensation for culture-loaded words. On the level of the language beauty in harmony, the four translation methods employed by Lin Yutang involve keeping the same sentence structure as that in the source text, creating auditory beauty, choosing appropriate words, and effecting equivalence on the number of words. Although Arthur Waley conveys the meaning of the source text, he fails to create the visibility of rhetoric devices in the target text.This comparative study shows that there are three situations of visibility of literary forms in the target text. In the first situation, the translation reproduces the poetic characteristics and language beauty so as to create expected poetic effects. In the second situation, for conveying the meaning as well as the other reasons, translators fail to reproduce the language beauty through sacrificing the language characteristics of the source text. In the last situation, translators do, on the one hand, reproduce part of the original literary forms, but on the other hand, leave some defects in the expression while achieving the visualization of the rhetoric devices.Visibility is an important issue in literary translation. First, it highlights the characteristics of the source text, enabling readers to feel sufficiently exotic language and its corresponding culture. Second, it plays a significant role in translation practice, thus benefiting translators in that it enhances their translation ability. Third, it is also meaningful for enriching translation theories.