A Study On Chinese Translation Of Swift’s Prose From An Aesthetic Perspective

Jonathan Swift is an essential figure in the history of English prose. He proposed avery famous definition of style: Proper words in proper places, makes the truedefinition of a style. He prose is regarded as the model and standard by the fellowwriters. In this sense, he is the founder of the English prose style of the eighteenthcentury. His prose has plain and elegant language form, and, meanwhile, containsdeep, profound meaning and acrid satire. Therefore, Swift’s prose, with its uniquefeatures, perfectly shows the aesthetic values. Therefore, via the translation of Swift’sprose, the literary value contained in it can also be delivered. Many renowned Chinesewriters, such as Lu Xun, knew Swift and were further influenced by Swift, throughreading the Chinese versions of his works.However, because of his acrid satire in his prose, he is often neglected anddisliked by English literary critics in spite of his importance in the history of Englishprose. As a result of this, the translation field has not paid enough attention to thisgreat prose writer. Accordingly, there is not much research on the Chinese translationversions. That is why the study on the translation of Swift’s prose lags far behind.Therefore, the author believes that there exist important research value and researchcapacities.The theory of aesthetics provides a theoretic framework as guidance for the studyon Chinese versions of his prose. Aesthetics is a subject which studies people’s feelingtowards beauty. Translation aesthetics, the combination of aesthetic theory and theresearch on translation, has been attracting the attention in the translation field.Translation aesthetic theory well fits the research on literary translation becauseliterature itself is the experience and representation of beauty. The author of this thesisholds the opinion that the study on the translation of Swift’s prose cannot be separatedfrom aesthetics. The typical feature of prose, which is loose in form but focused insoul, determines that a good Chinese translation version should also be thecombination of language form and the inner soul, which can well be approached fromthe perspective of aesthetics. Therefore, the author attempts to conduct a tentative study on the major Chineseversions of Swift’s prose on the basis of the translation aesthetic theory, which isproposed by Professor Liu Miqing. From different levels like phonetic level, lexicallevel, syntactic level and image level, the author tries to carry out a relatively in-depthstudy on how the Chinese versions deliver the aesthetic value so as to provide areference to the research on the translation of Swift’s prose.The thesis provides a different view, the translation aesthetic perspective, to thestudy on the translation of Swift’s prose. It is hoped that the thesis will be of somehelp to the study on translating Swift’s prose and the theoretical study of thetranslation of prose.