Probe Into The Relationship Of The Aesthetic Subject And Object In Tang Poetry Translation

Classical Chinese poetry is the valuable crystallization oftraditional culture. It contains profuse cultural connotation andrepresents the highest aesthetic achievement of classical Chineseculture. Tang poetry as one of the peak of the development ofclassical Chinese poetry, its unique aesthetic qualities are illustratedwith many examples in this paper from two angles of form beauty andnon-formal beauty. Poetry translation requires not only to transfer thelinguistics information, but also to reproduce the artistic beauty of theoriginal text. Only in this way, it can enable the reader both toacquire the 1ingujstic information and to be enlightened，moved，andto undergo aesthetic experience in the process of reading the versionjust as he reads the original. The author in this thesis believes that it issignificant for the research on poetry translation strategies to applyaesthetics to poetry translation. The thesis will carry out an analysison the relationship between the aesthetic object and the aesthetic subject.This paper firstly makes a brief literature review of the relatedviews on the aesthetic source of translation theory both in the Westand China, and it then gives the general theory explanation about thedevelopment and evolution of translation aesthetics both in the Westand China. It then elaborates on two essential elements in translationaesthetics, that is, aesthetic object and aesthetic subject. Aestheticobject covers all the aesthetic elements contained in the original text.It consists of two systems: form system and non-form system. Allaesthetic elements in all forms contained in these two systems are tobe reproduced in the target text. Aesthetic subject has two basicfeatures: objective constraints and subjective initiative. Objectiveconstraints are the primary factors that make translation different fromwriting and literal or artistic creation. It can be safe to say that there isno translation without objective constraints. The subjective initiativeis the capacity to start up the aesthetic potentiality and creativity of atranslator, which provides a possibility to transcend obstacles betweenlanguage forms, culture and etc to reproduce the aesthetic experiencein the target text. In the translation process, how to deal with therelationship between the aesthetic subject and the aesthetic object isessential for poetry translation, especially for the English versions ofTang poetry. Based on an analysis of English versions of severalclassical Chinese poems from the aspects of phonetic beauty, lexicalbeauty, syntactic beauty and artistic beauty, this paper concludes that:a harmonious and integrative relationship should exist between theaesthetic subject and the aesthetic object. Overemphasis on either sideis inappropriate. Being word to word to the original text, withoutgiving an overall consideration to other elements only leads to anunreadable target text. On the other hand, giving free rein to creativitywill end in another piece of writing, instead of a translated text.