A Comparative Study On Chinese Versions Of Two Masterpieces Of Robert Burns’ Poems-from The Perspective Of Three Beauties Principle

With the development of cultural communication between Chinese and westerncountries, poetry translation tends to play a more and more important role inTranslation Studies. English poems have attracted more and more Chinese readersbecause of their successful Chinese versions. However, how to translate Englishpoems to Chinese successfully and whether the versions convey the poet’s thoughts,feeling and style require more research on translation norms in English-to-Chinesepoetry translation.Taking Three Beauties Principle as its theoretical basis, the research makesstudies on Robert Burns’ masterpieces My Love Is Like a Red, Red Rose and MyHeart’s in the Highlands and their Chinese versions by a comparative analysis on thesource text and the target text from the perspectives of sense, sound and form.The research finds that Wang Zuoliang’s versions are the best, because it clingsto the Three Beauties Principle: beauty in sense (meaning, image and feeling); beautyin sound (rhyme and rhythm); beauty in form (style and poetry line). It reveals thatThree Beauties Principle not only provides the guidance for Chinese-to-Englishpoetry translation but also can be taken as theoretical principles in English-to-Chinesepoetry translation.