A Study On The Translation Of Poems In Hong Loumeng From The Perspective Of Aesthetic Empathy

Hong Loumeng has the multi-dimensional artistic value, extensive profound ideologicalcontent and a variety of language styles, among which, poetry is one of the most brilliantfeature. In Hong Loumeng, poems have the functions to prompt the plot development, tosuggest the change of the characters’ destiny and to depict the characters and psychologicalactivities of the figures. It becomes the most important and indispensable part of the novel; atthe same time, due to its unique beauty of sound, form and artistic conception of poetry itselfwhich makes poetry becomes the most vivid expression of the author. The poems in HongLoumeng also help the readers to increase the most beautiful and pure aesthetic experience ofthe whole novel. In addition, due to the high demands of language ability of poetry and deepfoundation of multiple culture backgrounds, on one hand, the poetry had set up itself as a highdegree of cultural sample in the novel, on the other hand, it also brought more troubles fortranslation work, which makes the poems’ translation in Hong Loumeng become the key pointto judge the success of the whole translation of the novel.At present, there are lots of comparative studies on Hong Loumeng’s poetry translation,but few are made from the aspect from the aesthetic subject’s empathy, which means thestudy on the translation affected by the translator’s subjective empathy. So this paper willmake a comparative study of the characteristics of poetry translation in two different versionsof Hong Loumeng from the perspective of aesthetic empathy.There have been more than20translations of the full text or abridged versions of HongLoumeng, the most famous ones are: A Dream of Red Mansions by the Chinese scholars,Yang Xianyi and his wife, and The Story of the Stone by the British sinologist David Hawkes.In this paper, the study is made on the poetry’s translation based on the two versions.Poetry aesthetic value embodies in the beauty of sound, the beauty of language form andthe beauty of artistic conception. According to the Aesthetic Empathy Theory proposed byLiu Miqing, the process of poetry translation is the process of aesthetic representation of it, aswell as the whole process of aesthetic projection, aesthetic feedback and inner imitationbetween the aesthetic object and the aesthetic subject. After the studies of the two translators’versions, it is found that both the two translators have experienced the whole aestheticempathy process during their translation. However, there are differences in the empathyprocess:1) Although the two translators experienced the same action in the firststep-projection from AST (Aesthetic Subject of Translation) to AOT (Aesthetic Object ofTranslation), the feedback from AOT to AST will always be various with different subject’sempathy;2) Yang Xianyi preferred to imitate the original Chinese poems in sound and form,while Hawkes preferred to create the pattens in sound and form to cater to the aesthetic habits of the target readers;3) Yang Xianyi preferred to translate literally, while Hawkes preferred touse paraphrastic translation in the level of conveying the artistic conception of Chinesepoems. And this paper will try to analyze and explain the empathy differences from the aspectof empathy obstacles and thus try to explain characteristics of Yang Xianyi’s version andHawkes’ version from a fresh point of view.