Reproduction Of Fuzzy Beauty In Six Chapters Of A Floating Life Translated By Lin Yutang

Being a renowned linguist, Lin Yutang enjoyed a great popularity both at home andabroad. Except for an abundance of the works he wrote, he also provided us with a greatvolume of translated works and also put forward significant translation theory which couldbe fully illustrated in his academic paper “On Translation”.“Two feet set in bi-culture ofEast and West, one heart looks into works of heaven and hell”, these two couplets are thetrue reflection of Lin Yutang’s attitude towards the relationship between Eastern andWestern Culture. Devoting almost all his life to writing and translating, Lin remained thebest among those who introduced Chinese Culture to the Westerners and at the same timeintroduced the Western Culture to Chinese people. As a translator with persistenttranslating practice as well as widely recognized theory, Lin Yutang offered rich sourcesfor study and research in the translation field, among which his highly-praised translatedwork “Six Chapters of a Floating Life” as a whole dwarfs all the other works of hisespecially in translating fuzzy beauty of Chinese characteristic.Recently, researches on Lin Yutang’s translated works spring up like mushrooms inextensive ranges and also expand from single perspective to multi-perspectives, no doubtthat Six Chapters of a Floating Life translated by Lin is no exception. Although take Lin’stranslated work Six Chapters of a Floating Life as the object of this study, the writer,instead of discussing and analyzing this work from macroscopic aspects, ventures toanalyze this work from minor aspect which is the reproduction of fuzzy beauty. Being arepresentative who applied aesthetic thoughts to translation studies and practice, LinYutang fully believes that “translation is art”. As part of the translation aesthetics, fuzzyaesthetics embodies the reflection of the fuzzy beauty. Here comes the question of how topreserve and reproduce the fuzzy beauty of the source language. This paper is intended toanalyze and appreciate the reproduction of the fuzzy beauty from linguistic aspect, culturalaspect and artistic aspect, and then to make the summary of the strategies Lin Yutangemployed to achieve the aim of reproduction of the fuzzy beauty as well as reflection fromhis possible deficiencies. With this new aspect, this paper is hoped to make a littlecontribution to the translated work involving fuzzy language and fuzzy beauty during theprocess of translating Chinese to English especially those classical Chinese works with distinct Chinese characteristics.This paper starts with the literature review of previous studies on “Six Chapters of aFloating Life” translated by Lin Yutang which helps the writer to obtain a new aspect todevelop this study. Chapter two mainly elaborates Lin Yutang’s growth and academicachievements as well as his translation theory, especially expounds fuzzy beauty and fuzzybeauty of Six Chapters of a Floating Life. Chapter three consists of the case studyrespectively from linguistic aspects, cultural aspects and artistic aspects. Chapter fourcomes to the reflection from the strategies Lin Yutang employed in the processing oftranslating this work and his possible deficiencies so as to learn more from the master’stranslated work to guide the translation practice in the future. Last chapter is the conclusionwhich looks back the whole study and makes summarization of this study.