A Study On Poetry Illustrated By Feng Zikai & Translated By Xu Yuanchong From The Perspective Of Translation Aesthetics

The book Poetry Illustrated by Feng Zikai & Translated by Xu Yuanchong, first published in January 2013, collects more than 140 illustrated poems. Prof. Xu focuses on the translation of Chinese classical poems, most of which are masterpieces of distinguished poets in the past dynasties or widely spread ones. Yet many poems selected in this book are rarely known, how to translate these unknown poems into English or bring them to a new height is a new challenge to Prof. Xu. Therefore, this book, which is unique in Prof. Xu’s translated works, has high research value.Based on the basic theoretical framework of aesthetics, Liu Miqing’s translation aesthetics theory inherits and promotes the Chinese traditional aesthetics; therefore it is called “a translation theory with Chinese characteristics”. As aesthetic thought is a distinctive characteristic in Prof. Xu’s translation career, and scholars have paid little attention on the book Poetry Illustrated by Feng Zikai & Translated by Xu Yuanchong since the publication of it, it is highly necessary and feasible to use the translation aesthetics theory to study the translated poems selected from the book. The author of this thesis introduces the theoretical framework of the translation aesthetics theory, discusses the three elements of Liu Miqing’s translation aesthetics theory: aesthetic subject, aesthetic object and aesthetic reproduction, and carries out an analysis of the translated poems.Adopting a qualitative research method, the author selects thirty-nine examples and analyzes them from the aspect of how to achieve the reproduction of the formal and non-formal systems. The formal system of aesthetic object can be subdivided into phonological level which involves rhythm, onomatopoeia, etc.; lexical level which involves reduplication, auxiliary word, part of speech, numbers, etc.; and syntactic level which involves word order and sentence type. While the non-formal system of aesthetic object can be subdivided into: emotional level, cultural level and artistic level.The author finds out that Prof. Xu, as the aesthetic subject, skillfully and successfully achieves the aesthetic reproduction of the original poems without rigidly adhering to the form of them. In terms of the plain and unknown poems, he gains rhyme, and strengthens the tone and emotion in the translated versions through his creative conversions, which may help the poems be more popular among the foreign readers. In the process of translation, Prof. Xu conforms to the feelings of the foreign readers, expressing the emotion straight forward and explicitly in the translated versions; meanwhile, Prof. Xu chooses to weaken the cultural connotation of images or expresses the connotation of images bluntly to offer the target readers a chance to appreciate them. He also makes good use of imagination and creation to convey the artistic beauty of the original poem. Yet there are also defects in Prof. Xu’s translation. He pays much attention to rhythm and would choose the beauty in form rather than content. In spite of this, Prof. Xu’s translation skills are amazingly praiseworthy, which successfully realizes the aesthetic connotation of the original poems.