A Corpus-based Study On Aesthetic Representation Of Gone With The Wind

Gone with the Wind, the only published work of Margaret Mitchell ranked among the top of America’s best-selling and became a great success the moment it was published in 1936. By establishing a small corpus of four typical full-text Chinese translations of Gone with the Wind, this thesis tries to make a study from the aspects of sound, lexis, syntax, culture, image and artistic conception based on the translation aesthetics proposed by Liu Miqing. It aims to recognize the different representations of the aesthetic information of the original with large numbers of examples on the basis of corpus. It’s a study combines quantitative description and qualitative analysis together.This thesis is going to answer two questions: 1) Where does the aesthetic information lie in Chinese versions and how is the aesthetic representation achieved respectively in accordance with the source text? 2) What strategies are employed to reproduce the aesthetic information in four Chinese versions in light of translation aesthetics?The major findings are as follows:(1) Through the analysis of the Chinese translations of Gone with the Wind, it is concluded that the aesthetic information is embodied in both formal aesthetic system and non-formal aesthetic system of Chinese versions.To begin with, as far as the aesthetic representation of the formal system is concerned, when dealing with the representation of sound beauty, as for the source onomatopoetic words, the four translators all use corresponding Chinese onomatopoetic words to substitute the original onomatopoetic words; as for thesource plain words with neat pronunciation, the four translators all try to adopt reduplicated words such as ABB or AABB words with terse style. When dealing with the lexis beauty, as for some elegant or meaningful source words, translators all try to render their beauty in four-character idioms; the translators also adopt various corresponding Chinese sayings in accordance with the source sayings. When dealing with the syntax beauty, the corresponding parallel structure and the changed Chinese short clauses all show the syntax beauty of the original text.Secondly, as far as aesthetics of non-formal system is concerned, when dealing with the representation of culture beauty, Fu Donghua prefers to adopt domesticating translation in terms of culture-loaded words, phrases or the poetry. The beauty of culture in other three translations is a little bit lost. As for the representation of images and artistic conceptions of the source text, the four translators all try to achieve the same effect as the source text, however Fu Donghua does the best. He is successful in transferring the charm of the original, especially in some Chinese characteristic words and phrases, the poems or songs are also reappeared in Chinese ways, from which we can feel deeply the same as in the source text, other three versions are not that satisfactory in conveying these information.(2) Looking through the analysis, we can find that the translators employ various strategies to reproduce the aesthetic effect of the source text in light of translation aesthetics. The first is imitation, which includes SL-oriented imitation and TL-oriented imitation. For example, when translating onomatopoeic words,sayings and parallel sentences, the translators all try to seek corresponding forms to the original text, it’s the imitation of the source language and the copy of the aesthetic information of source language. When translating long English sentences,translators often prefer short Chinese clauses, and as for the poems or songs, Chinese characteristic forms or language will be employed, this is the imitation of the features of Chinese language and culture.The second strategy translators adopt is rewriting. It is the artistic creation of the source text. In addition, the use of reduplicated words or four-character phraseswhen translating English simple or elegant but meaningful words is also an application of rewriting.