A Comparative Study Of Three English Versions Of Lun Yu

As one of the most influential Chinese classics in ancient time, Lun Yu recordsthe sayings and conducts of Confucius and his disciples. The language is concise butconcealed, plain in appearance but far-reaching in meaning, and rich in a variety ofrhetorical devices, which bears unique aesthetics and leaves deep impression onnumerous readers. This thesis attempts to apply translation aesthetics to the study ofLun Yu’s translated versions and hopes to be able to contribute fresh perspective andenlightenment to the study of translations of Lun Yu.For a long time, translation as an art has exerted positive and profound influencein people’s daily life. Aesthetics, the subject of studying people’s cognitive feelingstoward beauty, is of great significance for the formation and development of Chinesetranslation theory, whose appearance and development have provided a platform andbasis for the researches of literature and translation. Therefore, the combination ofaesthetics and translation has become the hot topic and drawn great concern amongscholars. Among all the theories, translation aesthetics constructed by the Chinesescholar Liu Miqing applies Chinese traditional aesthetic theory to the exploration andpractice of translation theories, proposes the two basic concepts (the translationaesthetic object and the translation aesthetic subject), and points out the types andmeans in the stage of aesthetic representation to elaborate and guide the translationpractice. This theory has provided a new perspective for the study of literarytranslation.In Liu Miqing’s opinion, literary translation is an art to represent the sourcelanguage, a kind of aesthetic process, which is the aesthetic translation. Literarytranslation calls for the translation aesthetic subject to use the target language torepresent the aesthetic feelings and effects conveyed by the original text. The ultimatepurpose is to achieve the aesthetic representation of literary works. As the last stage ofthe translation aesthetic experience, aesthetic representation can best reflect thetranslators’ translation competence and capability.Based on the theoretical guiding principle of Liu Miqing’s translation aesthetics, through the comparative study of Lun Yu’s translated versions by Arthur Waley, EzraPound and Xu Yuanzhong, this thesis analyzes the aesthetics features of thetranslation aesthetics object, explores into how the translation aesthetic subject intranslation practice develop one’s dynamics to represent the original aesthetic effects,and discusses the translation strategies and methods adopted by the translators in theiraesthetics representation of Lun Yu as well. This thesis reaches the followingconclusions: though the language styles expressed in the translated versions of Waley,Pound and Xu are quite different, they mainly adopt three strategies to represent theoriginal beauty, i.e. imitating the original form or structure in the target text, adjustingthe original sentence structure in accordance with the target text conventions, andadopting other assistant methods to make up for the loss of culture elements in thesource language. It is hoped that this thesis can shed light on interpreting andanalyzing Lun Yu and its translated versions...