Abstract

 Prose poetry is a modern lyric literary genre with features of both poetry and prose: it has luxuriant emotions and fantasy as a poetry, descriptive details and forms as a prose, as well as the musicality produced by beat and rhyme in a more liberal way. Congcong written by Zhu Ziqing(朱自清) is just such a work, in which the author expresses his sadness and helplessness about the fleeting time. 

Translation aesthetics is a rising discipline studying translation from the perspective of aesthetics. To apply translation aesthetics to the literary translation and criticism, especially when poetic types such as poetry, prose poetry and lyric prose are dealt with, is of great significance, because a good translation is required to transfer the beauty of the original work to the version as much as possible.

This thesis selects two highly-praised English versions—Rush by Zhu Chunshen(朱纯深) and Transient Days by Zhang Peiji(张培基). The method adopted is to divide the aesthetic constituents of the original text into formal system and non-formal system under the guidance of translation aesthetics, and to analyze the aesthetic representation of translators in two versions. Both versions well represent the beauty of the original text, but show differences on which part of aesthetic flavor to focus on. Generally speaking, Zhang’s version shows more delicate handing with the sense, while Zhu’s translation achieves better artistic conception. Besides, Zhang concerns more about the acceptability of the target readers thus makes obvious adaptation in the syntactic forms, but Zhu is apt to retain the forms of the original work, which contributes to the representation of the writing style.

Key words: translation aesthetics; version analysis; Congcong; aesthetic representation.

Contents

Abstract

摘  要

1. Introduction-1

1.1Research Background-1

1.2Research Purpose and Significance-1

2. Literature Review-2

2.1The Historical Origin of Translation Aesthetics-2

2.2 The Modern Development of Translation Aesthetics-2

2.3 Concepts Related to Translation Aesthetics-3

2.3.1 Translation Aesthetic Object and its Aesthetic Constituents-3

2.3.2 Translation Aesthetic Subject and its Attributes-4

2.3.3 Aesthetic Representation-4

3. Representation of Aesthetic Values in TAO-5

3.1 Aesthetic Representation of the Formal Aesthetic Values-5

3.1.1Representation at the Phonic Level-5

3.1.2 Representation at the Lexical Level-9

3.1.3 Representation at the Syntactic Level-10

3.2 Aesthetic Representation of the Non-formal Aesthetic Values-13

3.2.1 Beauty of Sentiments-13

3.2.2 Beauty of Artistic Conception-14

3.2.3 Beauty of Style-15

4. Conclusion-16

4.1 A Summary of the Performances of Translators-16

4.1.1 Performance in Dealing with Sense-16

4.1.2 Performances in Dealing with Form-16

4.1.3 Performances in Dealing with Spirit-17

4.2 The Room for Improvement in Both Versions-17

4.3 The Limitation of the Research-18

References-19

Appendix-20