A Comparative Study Of The Fuzzy Language Of Biancheng From The Perspective Of Translation Aesthetics

Fuzziness is one of the primary features of language,which is a universal phenomenon.The fuzziness in this thesis refers to the fuzziness in aesthetics,or it is called “artistic fuzzy language”.Fuzzy language means that words convey fuzzy semantic meaning.Richards(1965),the famous British scholar in his monograph The Philosophy of Rhetoric stated: “The old rhetoric regards the fuzziness as a mistake in language and wants to limit and eliminate it;the new rhetoric regards the fuzziness as nature of language and it can't be avoided in most dialogues.” Fuzziness gives language more flexibility,information and imagination.Especially in literary works,it can make the language more expressive.Translation aesthetics is a subject that combines aesthetics and translation,which is developed from the aesthetics.Differing from the West aesthetics in never focusing on language,Chinese translation theory is close to the aesthetics.Liu Miqing's translation aesthetics has made the study on aesthetic subjects and objects,and rule of aesthetic representation,which can provide more information for the study of fuzzy language in literary works.Biancheng is Shen Congwen's representative work,a great novelette that expresses the feeling of native land.It is honored as a poetic novel that conveys Shen's aesthetics ideal.The introverted expression and poetic language contribute to the fuzzy beauty of the novel.The two English versions of Biancheng,translated by Yang Xianyi,Gladys Yang and Jeffrey C.Kinkley are chosen for the comparative study in this thesis.Under the guideline of Liu's aesthetics translation,the thesis analyzes the representation of fuzzy language in these two versions.In the thesis,fuzzy language is analyzed at two levels: rhetorical and non-rhetorical.On the basis of the analysis,the author also discusses the retainment and ablation of fuzzy language in C-E literary translation.Fuzzy language adds fuzzy beauty to Biancheng,and also brings challenges to the C-E translation.Based on the analysis of Chapter 3,the thesis comes out the conclusion that the retainment and ablation of fuzzy beauty both exist in C-E translation.Therefore,Chapter 4 has a discussion on this phenomenon and has summed up the reasons: the translation of fuzzy language is limited to the sound,form and other factors of source language;some ablations of fuzzy language are inevitable,because different language systems and different aesthetic mechanisms of Chinese and English,and the translator's subjective initiative.Though the process and conclusion of the study have many shortages,the author hopes that the thesis can enrich the studies on the translation of fuzzy language of Biancheng.