On Syntactic Features And Their Translation Of A Brief History Of Chinese Aesthetic Culture Into English

The Chinese book A Brief History of Chinese Aesthetic Culture represents anachievement in studying and carrying forward traditional Chinese aesthetic culture, and in anattempt to tap the most valuable Chinese aesthetic culture resources, surveys the history oftraditional aesthetic culture of feudal China in a chronological order. The English translationof the book is of practical significance to spreading traditional Chinese aesthetic culture to theoutside world. Due to its overall features of both an academic and a cultural and artistic work,its translation into English is challenging, and since there has not English translation of itavailable now, our translation project of the book is an original one.The object of the present research is the tenth chapter of the book and its Englishtranslation, and the research question is, on the basis of the research achievements reportedand analysis of the Chinese text in general and in syntax in particular, how we grasp thesyntactic features of the Chinese text, and thereby realize syntactic transformation so that thetranslated version conforms to the syntactic features required by similar texts in English. Themethod of the present research, which is an applied project, is mainly one generally adoptedin humanities. Besides the introduction (the first chapter) and the conclusion (the last chapter),the thesis includes three chapters. The third chapter discusses the general strategy applicableto syntactic transformation in C-E translation, the third chapter analyzes the basic textual andsyntactic features of the tenth chapter of the book, and the fourth chapter explores theapplication of the strategy for syntactic transformation in rendering the tenth chapter of thebook.On the basis of her practice and research, the author holds that the syntactictransformation in C-E translation, with special reference to the tenth chapter of the book,should follow the syntactic rules of English as a principal principle, and the most importantthing in practice is to analyze the relevant factors such as of semantics, pragmatics, andrhetoric, and thus distinguish the Chinese messages on the sentence level according to theirinherent logical relationship, before they are expressed by choosing proper English syntacticdevices in constructing the English sentence. In the meantime, the translator shouldemphasize the intra-sentence and inter-sentence cohesion for an appropriate effect on the sentence and the text level. As far as the text in the present case of translation is concerned,the author takes the sentence as the basic translation unit, and the syntactic transformation asthe key link, and then considers the question of diction and rhetoric, which may producerelatively satisfactory result of translation. This practice, the author thinks, can maintain thevalues, belief system, theoretical conception, thought framework, and ways of discourse withacceptable effect, and meet the requirement of C-E translation of academic works for creatingaffinity with the vision of the other academic culture and making proper readjustment ofcommentary perspectives so that the translated version can put across what is expressed in theChinese text to the western academic readership.