A Study Of Yang Xianyi's English Translation Of Ru Lin Wai Shi—From The Perspective Of Translation Aesthetics

Ru Lin Wai Shi is a novel which reflects the life of scholars and gives a deep and unique description about the ancient imperial competitive examination and the fates of scholars. Meanwhile, it vividly depicted the social status, cates, costumes, speech etc. of characters. Researchers often choose the ironic effects, custom culture etc. of Ru Lin Wai Shi as their pointcuts of academic study to dissect Ru Lin Wai Shi from various perspectives. After being translated into English by Mr. Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang, its English version, The Scholars, has been researched from views of translation strategy, the translation of cultural items and metaphors, etc.. Nevertheless, so far there are few books and theses about The Scholars from the perspective of translation aesthetics.After reading relevant works and theses about translation aesthetics, the author analyzes The Scholars translated by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang mainly based on Liu Miqing's theory of translation aesthetics. The author gives a descriptive analysis about the formal and non-formal system of The Scholars, and explores how Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang represent the linguistic beauty and artistic beauty in The Scholars. In terms of the formal system, the author analyzes how the aesthetic subjects, Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang, represent the aesthetic effect in The Scholars based on the rhetorical devices at the phonological, lexical and syntactic levels. While in regard to emotion and idea, image and symbol and artistic conception in the non-formal system, the author will illuminate what efforts Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang have made to represent satiric style, figure traits and cultural implication in their translation.The author finds out that on the basis of faithfulness to the original text, Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang have translated Ru Lin Wai Shi with vivid words, pertinent diction and diverse sentence structures, thanks to their abundant knowledge of both Chinese and English and their precise comprehension of Ru Lin Wai Shi. As a result, they have endowed The Scholars with aesthetic value in terms of both formal and non-formal systems. The author hopes that this thesis can be served as a reference to those who do research into The Scholars and translation aesthetics.