"Three Beauties" Make Fine Works

Poetry is an art of language and a golden treasury of national language. The Chinese classical poetry is a gem in the treasure house of Chinese literature. For a long time, many scholars, foreign or domestic, have been engaging in translating the Chinese classical poetry and made great contributions to introducing this immortal heritage of Chinese culture to the world. Poetry translation is characterized by its artistry and subtlety as compared to that in the translation of other genres. The Chinese and English languages belong to different language families and there exists different cultural and linguistic backgrounds between China and the English –speaking countries, the task of poetry translation from Chinese into English has never been easy. Professor Xu Yuanzhong made remarkable contribution to Chinese poetry translation and has had far-reaching influence in the area, so far as the quality and quantity of his translation and translation theory are concerned. What is more, combining his experiences of poetry translation, he set forth 'three beauties'principle ---'beauty in meaning, beauty in sound and beauty in form'on poetry translation which has aroused heated debate, for the principle stresses 'beauty', especially 'beauty in sound', is not sometimes in consistent with 'faithfulness'which is the main stress of the mainstream of traditional Chinese translation theory. The author of this thesis chooses Xu Yuanzhong's 'three beauties'principle and his poetry translation as a subject matter, summarizes systematically Xu Yuanzhong's 'three beauties'on poetry translation and his poetry translation practice from multi-aspect and multi-perspective, makes tentative analysis on his translation practices which he applied his 'three beauties'to them and advocates to comment dialectically on Xu Yuanzhong's 'three beauties'principle to find its creative theoretical value and its practical significance. On the basis of comparative study on Xu yuanzhong's poetry translation practices and the debate on his 'three beauties'principle on poetry translation, the thesis offers some suggestions on making an objective and impartial judgment on Professor Xu Yuanzhong's poetry translation theory and his poetry translation practice. Through the examples given in the thesis the author points out that it is true there exists some drawbacks in Xu Yuanzhong's poetry translation practices. However, most of his poetry translation with 'three beauties'realized his own 'three beauties'principle and achieved much success. His consummate skill is worth learning from and taking as reference. His useful attempts on both poetry translation theory and practice are undoubtedly beneficial for the further development of Chinese literary translation.