Ablation And Maintenance Of Fuzzy Beauty In C-E Translation

Literature translation is regarded as a career full of regret. Generally only the translator can enjoy the beauty of the source text by himself/herself owing to the dramatic differences in language, history and aesthetic notion. As G. Malmqvist, sinologist of the eighteen members of the Nobel Prize for Literature, said,"Usually elegant expressions cannot be translated perfectly".(Liu Zaifu,1999:08) The most striking regret in translation of Chinese modern literary works might lie in the fact that our competence is largely limited in reproducing the aesthetic effect of Chinese fuzzy expressions. Fuzziness is one of the inherent and central characteristics of the natural language. Moreover the root difference between Chinese and the Western Indo-European languages exists in the language fuzziness, where rightly lies the advantage of Chinese. Chinese, which is a certain language for artistic conception, emphasizes the integrated effect and stresses paratactic expression without hunting careful analysis and strict logic. In contrast, English which disregards the integrated effect is hypotaxis-dependent, analysis-based and logic-oriented, even taking "symbolic logic" as its formal beauty. Fuzziness is the mainstream in Chinese and the tributary in English. Consequently there inevitably occurs the ablation of the fuzzy beauty in C-E translation of the literary works. The most hopeless matter we cope with is that we are incapable of maintaining the fuzzy beauty of Chinese during the process of C-E translation. As one of the important features of language, the aesthetic status of fuzziness differs from language to language. And the aesthetic differences challenge the translators when they operate the translation of language fuzziness. Therefore how to deal well with the transfer of the language fuzziness in literary work seems to be particularly important.Right now, the translation of fuzzy language has stimulated the interest of many scholars who participate in translation, and many scholars at home and abroad have been aware of the importance of language fuzziness in translation, especially in translation of literary works. And some translation theories have been put forward in many works. Though, at present, few monographs on the ablation and maintenance of fuzzy beauty in C-E translation have ever been published in the translation field, and systematic research and theoretical guidance have always been short in field of the maintenance beauty in C-E translation.Reception aesthetics which was popularized in the1960s caused a shift of the focus of literary theory from the author-work pole to the text-reader pole. Therefore, a macro instructive role is played by this theory in translating and accepting the literary works.Literary works are usually described with descriptive and fuzzy language which implies many meaning "indeterminacies" and meaning "blanks" and constitutes "the appealing structure" of the literary works. Language fuzziness provides the literary works with inexhaustible superb beauty and charm which can exhibit themselves with different visages from different angles by virtue of its aesthetic effects. Consequently this leaves space for readers to think it over independently, to imagine without restraint and to aftertaste freely and enhances the aesthetic values of the literature works.The great writer, Lu Xun, is an outstanding master of language with a unique style, and his works is a language art treasure of our national. Acknowledged, the language of Lu Xun’s works is extremely exact. Additionally, Lu Xun is an authority on fuzzy language. In his writings, fuzzy language is used quite commonly, which is an important component of Lu Xun’s unique language style. Lu Xun’s literary works embody abundant fuzzy beauty. Lu Xun Xuan Ji is a work of social encyclopedia. It is famous all over the world due to its vivid language, lively characters and distinctive folk custom. It is a master piece which successfully makes use of the merit of fuzzy language. It has been widely spread and translated into a lot of foreign languages. So far, it has several English versions, among which Lu Xun Xuan Ji by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang is the best-known one.For the above mentioned reasons, the author will undertake a tentative study on the English translation of Lu Xun Xuan Ji from the angle of language fuzziness to analyze the ablation and maintenance of the fuzzy beauty in C-E translation from the perspective of Reception Aesthetics. In this thesis the author first introduces a general notion of language fuzziness and makes tentative comments on the fuzzy language of Lu Xun Xuan Ji. Then the author offers a clarification of fuzzy language and language fuzziness and the studies on it home and abroad and a macro analysis on the aesthetic effects of language fuzziness in Lu Xun Xuan Ji. The author also introduces the Reception Aesthetics and explicates the relationship between language fuzziness and the "appealing structure" or the "horizon of expectation" based on the reception of Lu Xun Xuan Ji. Following this, the author makes a tentative discussion on the aesthetic differences of the language fuzziness between Chinese and English and elucidates the root reasons which bring about such differences from three perspectives, namely from the perspective of geographic and social environment, the perspective of philosophy and the perspective of language structure. From this the author launches the translation regret and the ablation the fuzzy beauty in C-E translation. Herewith the author explains the ablation of the inexhaustible fuzzy beauty in the C-E translation from the angle of language fuzziness and also offers a general analysis on this from rhetoric and non-rhetoric categories based on Lu Xun Xuan Ji translated by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang.In the end the author turns to the illustration of the occasional maintenance of the fuzzy beauty in English version of Lu Xun Xuan Ji at the phonetic, lexical, syntactic and textual level and therefore proposes the tentative requirements on the translators for maintaining the fuzzy beauty as much as possible in the process of C-E translation. The author also states her minor enlightenments on Nobel Prize for Literature and good wishes for better translation of modern literary works.