A Report On The Translation Of Yueji Based On Liu Miqing’s Translation Aesthetics

Apart from poetry, fiction and drama, essay is also considered as an importantliterary genre which enjoys a long history of thousands of years in China and highaesthetic value. The content of aesthetic value and how to preserve the aesthetic valuein translation are key issues in literary translation. Translation aesthetics is thecombination of aesthetics and translation research, which has recently developedrapidly in China. The research on the translation of Chinese essays cannot beseparated from the study on the aesthetics of the original as well as the study on howto preserve such value in translating, since essays are the integration of all kinds ofbeauties. Such characteristics of essay determine that a good translation of essayshould not only preserve the meaning of the original but also the style, which can bewell achieved from the perspective of aesthetics.In view of the above, taking Liu Miqing’s translation aesthetics as the theoreticalguidance, the author attempts to achieve the aesthetic equivalence between the sourcetext and the target one from the formal level and non-formal level. This paper firstlypoints out that it is essential for translators to equip themselves with correlative theoryon literary translation and background information of the source text before going intotranslating. In the process of translation, the translator should follow four steps,namely, aesthetic comprehension, aesthetic transformation, aesthetic improvementand aesthetic representation, aiming to not only convey the phonetic and lexicalbeauty of the source text, but also reproduce its beauty of image and style.What’s more, essay translation is regarded as an aesthetic appreciation of variousopposite factors and relations in the process of translation, which requires thetranslator not only to overcome the difficulties resulted from the differences betweentwo languages and cultures, but also to comprehend the beauty both in formal systemand in non-formal system. In addition, it is also essential to accurately understand theaesthetic constituents in source text so as to represent the aesthetic value and artistryof source text in the target one.In terms of translating Chinese essay into English, the author chooses the Yueji, acollection of essays written by a famous Chinese writer Jia Pingwa, as the source textin her translation practice and adopts the translation aesthetic theory put forward byProfessor Liu Miqing as guideline in translating. The author tries to figure out how topreserve the aesthetic values in literary translation under Liu Miqing’s translation aesthetic theory as well as its deficiency in some cases.