An Analysis Of Xu Yuanchong's Translation Aesthetics From His English Translation Of Selected Poems Of Bai Juyi

With the growing demand for cultural exchanges between countries,the translation activities have been developed rapidly.As one shining pearl of Chinese traditional culture,Chinese classical poetry attracts more and more foreign reader's attention.Chinese classical poetry is concise in language,distant in mood,clear in rhythm and strict in structure,increasing the difficulty in translation on Chinese classical poetry undoubtedly.How to convey the aesthetic implication of Chinese classical poetry to foreign readers at the utmost? In the past one and half century,Both Chinese and Western translators have made lots of practices and proposed profound insights into the translation of Chinese classical poetry.As one of the most influential translators in Chinese classical poetry translation field,Xu Yuanchong not only made numerous translation practices but also put forward profound and unique translation theory.Based on the Chinese and Western translation aesthetics,this thesis takes the "Three-Beauty" principle proposed by Xu Yuanchong as the theoretical foundation to study his poetry translation practice.To provide a practical theoretical guidance for the translation of Chinese classical poetry,Xu Yuanchong 's translation aesthetic thought is explored by penetrating analysis and supplementary comparisons based on some of Bai Juyi's poems.This thesis also analyzes the development of Chinese and Western translation aesthetics by comparing the differences between English and Chinese as the background of Xu Yuanchong's aesthetic thought on translation.Actually,both Chinese and Western translation activities have experienced a long development history,and they are closely related with philosophical-aesthetics.China's translation practice can be traced back to 1700 years ago when Buddhist scriptures were introduced into China with translation for the first time.The purpose of translation was to convey the information of original text to readers,regardless of the aesthetic factors.The ambiguity and impressiveness of Chinese traditional translation theory and its methodology are caused by the ambiguity and openness of Chinese language itself,which is not conducive to the scientific and systematicguidance of translation.However,the translators have realized the importance of aesthetics in translation in the initial stage of Western translation theory.Because of the strong logic and strictness of English language,the Western translation aesthetics is more scientific and systematic than the theory of Chinese translation.So the development of Chinese translation aesthetics is far behind the Western.In this context,Xu Yuanchong challenged to the traditional Chinese translation theory and put forward the principle of “Three-Beauty” principle as the standard of literary translation.Although the studies on Xu Yuanchong's translation and theory are quite abundant,inadequate researches have been done on the basis of modern translation aesthetics.At the same time,Bai Juyi's poems were often created with the realistic approach and featured by plainness and simplicity,so that the poetry translation researchers tend to research the historic and political significance rather than the romance.The writer of this paper holds that aesthetic interest plays an important role in Chinese classical poetry by providing much vitality and imaginary space.It is worthwhile to be explored in more details.The research results prove that Xu Yuanchong's “Three-Beauty” principle does have a positive guiding effect on poetry translation.The breakthrough of“Three-Beauty” principle for the traditional Chinese translation theory made the translator more likely to achieve the maximum aesthetic effect in their translations,which is beneficial to foreign readers to get the same feelings as original readers.From Xu Yuanchong 's translation of Selected Poems of Bai Juyi,it can be concluded that the thought of Xu Yuanchong 's translation aesthetic keeps consistent with the modern translation aesthetics basically.The former is the inheritance and breakthrough of the latter,which illustrates that his translation aesthetics obeys the aesthetic trend of Chinese and Western readers and has a positive guiding significance for the translation of Chinese classical poetry.