Research On E-C Translation Of Percy Shelley's Lyrics From The Perspective Of The Theory Of Three Beauties

Many people have translated Percy Shelley's lyrics after his lyrics were introduced into China since the beginning of last century. Jiang Feng and Yang Xiling have translated more Shelley's lyrics than any others. Although some scholars have studied Jiang Feng's version and Yang Xiling's version, the studies are not enough and need expanding from new aspects. This thesis will make a research on Jiang Feng's and Yang Xiling's versions under the guidance of the Theory of Three Beauties put forward by Xu Yuanchong.The thesis employs descriptive comparison and statistics to analyze the characteristics of the two versions in three aspects—beauty in sense, sound and form—and compare the overall effect in the two versions. The study subject is the 54 lyrics which both translators have translated. As for beauty in sense, image and style are discussed. Image can be further divided into four types: political image, love image, natural image and other images. A generalized analysis about style from several aspects will also be made in this part. As for beauty in sound, the present author examines similarity of rhyme scheme in each version compared with the original lyrics; and similarity of rhythm is also examined under the principle of the replacement of foot with pause. As for beauty in form, the shape of the translated lyrics will be studied under Huang Gaoxing's principle of pause and characters. Besides, the division of stanzas in the two versions will also be discussed.Through comparison and statistics, it is found that the two translators achieve most beauty in sense although there are some mistakes in the two versions about image and style. Yang Xiling reproduces more beauty in sound then Jiang Feng, and improvement of beauty in sound is needed in both two versions. The similarity in rhyme scheme in Yang Xiling's version is 16%, higher than that in Jiang Feng's version which is just 6%. 33% lyrics and 16% stanzas in Yang Xiling's version show the rhythm in the original lyrics, while 35% lyrics and 15% stanzas in Jiang Feng's version show the rhythm. Although there should be more improvement in form, Jiang Feng does better in the shape of lyrics and the division of stanzas compared with Yang Xiling. Taking all the three aspects into consideration, Jiang Feng's version and Yang Xiling's version are equally remarkable according to the Theory of Three Beauties.