A Comparative Study On Translation Of Poems In Hong Lou Meng-From The Perspective Of Aesthetics Of Translation

Hong Lou Meng is one of the four greatest classical novels in China. The poetry of this novel plays an important role in its plot and artistic value and has long been loved by the reader. Currently, it is a trend to introduce Chinese culture to the world. For this reason, studies on translation of this novel and its poetry have attracted more scholars’ attention. The aim of this thesis is to take Liu Miching’ theory about aesthetics of translation as a perspective, make use of related cases, and find out the differences between Yang Xianyi and David Hawkes in aesthetic values and aesthetic principles of representation in translation.The marriage of aesthetics to translation boasts a long history in both China and the west. It is significant nowadays for the fact that it is leading people back to the ontology of translation studies and is playing an important role in linguistic optimization and functional compensation. In this thesis, theories of aesthetic subject, aesthetic object and aesthetic representation will be used as theoretical support for the analysis of 9 cases selected from more than 160 poems that were translated by Yang Xianyi and David Hawkes.The thesis is composed of five chapters, including a general introduction, a literature review, a theoretical description, a comparative study, and a summary of this research. It is found by this research that David Hawkes and Yang Xianyi are different from each other in such aesthetic values as aesthetic emotion, aesthetic imagination and aesthetic orientation in culture. The principles of aesthetic representation taken by the two translators are influenced by these differences, resulting in a fact that the artistic value of poems translated by Yang Xianyi seems to be better than the ones translated by David Hawkes when they are considered from the perspective of aesthetics of translation.