On Xia Ji-an’s Translation Of A Collection Of American Essays-from The Perspective Of Translation Aesthetics

Many beautiful English essays have been translated into Chinese, which are highly enjoyed by Chinese people. Xia Ji-an is one of the best translators who translated very beautiful essays from English into Chinese. With unique formal characteristics, translating techniques and wonderful aesthetic value, many aspects of his translation-A Collection of American Essays are worth studying intensively.Aesthetics has been in close relation with Chinese translation theory for a long time. Throughout the history, translators and scholars have made great efforts in the development of Chinese translation theory to promote the integration of Aesthetics and translation. Taking traditional Chinese aesthetic theory as the guidance and borrowing some theories from the Western Aesthetics, Professor Liu Miqing has developed contemporary Chinese Translation Aesthetics Theory. Translation aesthetics is the combination of aesthetics and the research on translation. Translation aesthetics can better fit the research on literary translation since literature itself is the experience and representation of beauty, so the aesthetic awareness is very important to translators in order to reproduce in the target text the same meaning, emotion and aesthetic flavor of the original text.Under the guidance of Liu Miqing’s Translation Aesthetics Theory, this thesis will conduct an analysis of Xia Ji-an and his translation of A Collection of American Essays from the angles of translation aesthetic object, translation aesthetic subject and aesthetic representation. As the translation aesthetic subject, the translator, Xia Ji-an’s pre-structure plays an important role in the process of translating. Therefore, this thesis will probe into Xia Ji-an’s pre-structure, which includes the aesthetic feeling, knowledge, and capability of him. This thesis will also make a relatively comprehensive analysis on how the translated essays reproduce the aesthetic constituents of the formal system from various levels like phonological level, lexical level and syntactic level. The aesthetic constituents of the non-formal system, such as emotion and images, will be discussed in this thesis, too. With unique enchanting beauty and high literary value, a great number of examples in Xia Ji-an’s translation A Collection of American Essays are worthy of exploring and studying. It is hoped that this thesis could analyze the texts of the original essay in relation to Xia Ji-an’s correspondent translations,and clarify the artistic beauty and features of Mr. Xia’s essay translation, thus contribute to literary translation as a whole.