A Study On The Reproduction Of Aesthetic Notions In The Translation Of De Profundis

It is universally acknowledged that prose,as its outstanding features of refined language usage and subtle emotion expression,has been a hot topic both in literature studies and literary translation studies.Lyric prose has its own important position in the prose family due to its unique writing style in form as well as in the reproduction of conveying beauty-“Loose in form while concentrative in spirit”.To some extent,it combines the poetic rhythm and the novel narration.Furthermore,readers could experience the writers' exquisite feelings in line with the fine and smooth writing of lyric proses.Wilde,as a writer of aestheticism,is excellent at language art.His many famous literary works have been translated into Chinese,and are widely known by Chinese readers.De Profundis is one of his most distinguished lyric proses,which contain all the fine features of his language skills in writing.There is no doubt that readers could enjoy the aesthetic notions in De Profundis.Unfortunately,at the same time,these specific language usages and complicated organization in each level of the text are certainly to be a great challenge for all the translators,if they try to convey all the aesthetic elements into Chinese from English.The thesis,taking the Chinese Version of De Proundis translated by Zhu Chunshen as an example,aims to explore what Zhu has reproduced in his translation in terms of aesthetic notions at the linguistic levels of sounds,words,sentences and paragraphs and what he has done with regard to aesthetic reproduction at psychological levels of the emotion,images and artistic atmosphere.As a leading figure of the contemporary translation studies,Liu Miqing's theories about translation aesthetics have been introduced into the thesis as the theoretical basis to evaluate Zhu's translation.The thesis will try to analyze the aesthetic elements in the prose of De Proundis from two main aspects: linguistic and psychological aesthetic systems of aesthetic object.It is necessarily mentioned that the thesis attempts to cover all the aesthetic features of the two aspects systematically,but the fact is that it is definitelyimpossible to deal with them all in detail.As a result,picking up a typical example as the representative of a certain kind will be a reasonable method for analysis.The study shows that Zhu's translation has achieved reproduction of aesthetic notions both at linguistic and psychological aesthetic levels.Meanwhile,the difference between the Chinese version and the English original prose has been explained,the reason of which could be inferred from many aspects,basically some of them originating from the two languages themselves,and others from the aesthetic subjects-the translators and the target readers.Their habitual ways of aesthetic psychological state must be under the translator's considerations.Consequently,the loss of beauty in the Chinese version is inevitable.Anyhow,Zhu's translation is basically a successful one,which provides abundant practical ways of dealing with lyric proses,so it is sure of great help for further study in the field of prose translation,especially for the study of reproduction of aesthetic notions.