| Essay has a long history of thousands of years in China, and essay creation has acquired a greatachievement. Chinese essays, being the essence of Chinese literature and the carrier of Chineseculture, are not only translatable but also worth translating. As one of the upholders of thisview, Professor Zhang Peiji has long been devoting to the translation of modern Chineseessays, and thus has made a great contribution to the theoretical study as well as the practiceof modern Chinese essays’ translation, especially to the translation practice. The threevolumes of selected modern Chinese essays translated by him have been well received byreaders and scholars, and provide good reference and guidance for the translation of modernChinese essays. So it is of significance to analyze Zhang Peiji’s translation for the study ofessay translation. At present, the study of essay translation, especially C-E essay translationby Zhang Peiji is done mainly from the stylistic and aesthetic perspectives, which has yieldedsubstantial results but still has some shortcomings. Neither the study of transfer of essaycontent nor the study of information loss of original work in the course of translating has beendone very much. And essays’ distinctive characteristics, such as realness, lyricism,beautifulness, freeness and subjectivity, determine that essay translation should realize thetransfer of content, style and beauty. In such a situation, this paper tries to study the essaytranslation by Zhang Peiji from three aspects of content, style and beauty. Through analysis,the author of this paper finds that information of the three aspects can not be translatedequally and completely because of all kinds of limitation. In the course of translating, someinformation is completely transferred to the translation version; some information is lost butcompensated in other ways; some information is lost, but the translator can not do anything.And then this paper suggests Zhang Peiji’s essay translation be analyzed and evaluated byfaithfulness criterion interpreted from a new perspective. All these efforts are dedicated tomake contribution to later essay translation practice and study. |
