A Comparative Study On The Two English Versions Of Luotuo Xiangzi From The Perspective Of Translation Aesthetics

Luotuo Xianzi is Lao She’s most representative masterpiece. This novel has been translated and published into nearly 20 languages, which occupies an important position in the world literature. Due to Luotuo Xiangzi’s special status in the history of literature and its unique literary charm, lots of scholars have done various researches on it. But the studies of its translations are far from enough, and the research perspectives of these studies are relatively limited. Therefore, the author attempts to perform a comparative study on the two latest English versions of Luotuo Xiangzi, which were respectively translated by Chinese translator Shi Xiaojing as Camel Xiangzi (2001) and American scholar Howard Goldblatt as Rickshaw Boy (2010).The combination of translation and aesthetics produces a new theory:translation aesthetics. Based on the basic conceptions and principles of aesthetics, translation aesthetics explores the artistry and scientificity of translation and analyzes the aesthetic problems in the process of inter-lingual transformation. Translation aesthetics has provided a new platform for the studies of translation, especially for the studies of the translation of literary works. Taking translation aesthetics as the theoretical basis, this thesis attempts to make a comparative study on the aesthetic representation of the two English versions of Luotuo Xiangzi.The present thesis is mainly divided into five parts. The first chapter introduces the background, the significance and the organization of this research. Chapter Two is a review on the studies of translation aesthetics abroad and at home as well as the studies of the English versions of Luotuo Xiangzi. Then some fundamental contents in translation aesthetics are introduced in Chapter Three. Chapter Four is the most important part of the thesis, in which a comparative study is done on the two English versions from the perspectives of sound, word, sentence, image and ideorealm, under the guidance of translation aesthetics. The last chapter draws the conclusion which is based on the above analyses. Through comparative studies, the author finds out that on the whole, both the two translators have done a great job in representing the beauty of the original text with their own unique language styles and there is still some room for improvement in both versions.Hopeefully this thesis can bring a new perspective for the studies on the English versions of Luotuo Xiangzi. In addition, this thesis is hoped to prove that translation aesthetics can be an operative instrument to analyze the translation of literary works.