On The Sense Of Beauty Of Wang Zuoliang's Translation

Of Studies, written by English writer Francis Bacon is considered as the first class of essays for its refined language and marvelous content. Lundushu, translated by Professor Wang Zuoliang with a style of simplicity in classical Chinese, is considered as a translation canon for perfect rendering of the spirit and form for couched in a highly acclaimed English essay Of Studies by Francis Bacon. Many researchers studied Lundushu from different angles. Yet, the analysis of syntactic structure is not usually taken as a researching method.This thesis, aiming at revealing the success of Lundushu, has conducted a contrastive analysis of syntactic structure among classical Chinese, English and modern Chinese in terms of their typological differences, basic sentence types and lexical structures, and then come to the conclusion that a closer affinity of syntactic structure exists between classical Chinese and English than between modern Chinese and English in levels of circumstantial elements, passive voice and causative type.Based on this conclusion, Wang Zuoliang's translation Lundushu is analyzed along with other modern Chinese versions. The sentences for comparison are selected from 10 other famous translations of Of Studies according to the principle that only the ones most typical of modern Chinese can be picked out. The results of the analysis bear out the hypothesis that the affinity of syntactic structure between English and classical Chinese helps Wang Zuoliang in his translation to match the parallel sentence structure, preserve the metrical rhythm or musicality and re-create the style of brevity and simplicity.To sum up, in addition to Professor Wang's consummate skills and creative power, the language he chooses does play a great part in achieving the unity of form and content --- the sense of beauty in this literary reproduction.