| Under the great climate of the development of global cultural pluralism, Chinese culturalclassics have become one of the staple researching subjects on extensive cultural interactionsbetween China and Western world. The English translation of Chinese classics plays anelemental role in cultural transmission. As for Chinese theoretical translation, translation isendowed with peculiar touch by aesthetics. Pivoting around linguistic aesthetics and adheringto the basic principle of “translation as the body, aesthetic as the practice”, translationaesthetics raises the properties of translation aesthetic subject and translation aesthetic object,and the operating mechanism of aesthetic representation during translating process, whichfeatures positively in cultural communication and gives a new impetus to the development ofthe translation cause.As a seminal text of Taoist philosophy, Dao De Jing of immeasurable theoretical valueand gnomic signification has been drawing innumerable scholars at home and abroad intocontinuously exhausting and apprehending its philosophical acme with fresh eyes sincethousands of years ago so that a sort of magnificent landscape of the researches on Lao Zi isestablished manifestly. Dao De Jing not only has much high philosophical value, but also hasa vast reservoir of aesthetic genes. The language in it is characterized by the goodness ofharmonious sound and tone, solemnity, conciseness, profound implication, etc. However, thecurrent researches on Dao De Jing’s English translation are substantially given much moreprecedence from subjective commentary, translation skill, translators’ subjectivity, culturalconnotation, etc. Predicated on the theory of translation aesthetics by Liu Miqing, this thesisdraws upon the exemplary materials organized by Gu Zhengkun’s and Arthur Waley’s DaoDe Jing’s English versions and Dao De Jing’s Chinese version Lao Zi Jin Zhu Jin Yi editedby Chen Guying, and carries out a systemized study on Dao De Jing’s English translationFirst, it excavates the aesthetic information in the two English versions as aestheticobjects imparting the source text’s aesthetic qualities at the micro (linguistic structure) andmacro (extra-text) dimensions. Second, it makes an exploration of the inherent commonnature and discrepancies between Gu’s and Waley’s aesthetic sensations during renderingDao De Jing into English by contrastive analysis. Third, it makes a thorough inquiry into thesubstance of the application of the two eminent devices of aesthetic representation: dynamicimitation and aesthetic empathy to the process of rendering Dao De Jing.Through the entire contrastive analysis, the essential findings are drawn below. a) Thereexists much aesthetic information from linguistic structure such as phonetic and lexis, andfrom extra-text such as emotion, image and ideorealm in Dao De Jing’s English rendering. b)Viewing from the overall research process, it is substantiated that Gu Zhengkun shows more active aesthetic sensation, and his rendering is able to transmit all sorts of information ofgoodness in the original text of Dao De Jing more efficiently. Different translators fromdifferent nations have their own intrinsic aesthetic sensation: Gu Zhengkun generally pursuesa sort of compromising goodness between SL and TL, while Waley mainly shows the rationalgoodness of his native language during translation. Nonetheless, there indeed exists, in ameasure, certain commonness between both aesthetic senses during rendering the Chineseclassic literature. c) Dynamic imitation is the typical and essential methodology on thedimension of linguistic structure. And aesthetic empathy is the critical employment on thedimension of extra-text, which is necessarily grounded on the dynamic imitation at the microdimension.It sustains the necessity and prominence of applying translation aesthetics to Chineseclassics’ English rendering sphere, and still furnishes a practicable avenue to the furtherresearch and practice on a more systematic and thorough scope in this domain. |
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