On Aesthetic Representation Of The Two Chinese Versions Of The Scarlet Letter

Aesthetics is a subject studying people’s feelings toward beauty, and translation aesthetics, the combination of aesthetics and translation research, can apply perfectly to the research of literature translation since literature itself is the enjoyment and experience of beauty. So in order to reproduce the original meaning and aesthetic flavor in the target language text, translator’s awareness of aesthetics is especially important.It was not until 1995 when Professor Liu Miqing published his masterpiece An Introduction to Translation Aesthetics that the basic framework of the theory of translation aesthetics was firstly built up in a systematic way. Based on the principles of modern aesthetics and by applying the traditional aesthetics to the practice of translation, Liu argues that the aesthetic object of translation is the original text and the aesthetic subject of translation is the translator himself. He also elaborately discusses the formal system and non-formal system of the aesthetic object, and makes an exploration into the aesthetic representation in literature translation.The Scarlet Letter, published in 1850, is a well-known novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a romantic writer in the 1900s. Nathaniel Hawthorne is especially good at the application of figures of speech like hyperbole, metaphor and personification to make his language vivid and elegant. The value of literary novel largely depends on its unique language style, and as the most important carrier of its main theme, the language of The Scarlet Letter reveals special charm and unique feature.After reviewing the researches conducted on The Scarlet Letter, The author of this thesis find that although some progress have been made, but most of them are literary criticism or about the theme and symbols of this fiction. There are few in-depth and systematic researches about its translation, still less from the perspective of translation aesthetics. So through the adoption of the English edition published by World Publishing Corporation in 2008 and the two Chinese versions respectively translated by translators from Shengshi Education Foreign Masterpiece Translation Committee in 2011 and Jia Zongyi in 1998, this thesis attempts to conduct an in-depth and systematic study from the perspective of translation aesthetics.The theory of translation aesthetics put forward by Liu Miqing is the main theoretical foundation and a text analysis is conducted from both formal and non-formal system by applying this theory to the study of the original The Scarlet Letter and its two Chinese versions. In formal system, the author mainly discusses how the two Chinese versions protect and reproduce the original beauty in sound, lexis and syntax by dealing with the original rhetorical devices. Non-formal system mainly focuses on how the translators reproduce the original beauty of image and how they realize the overall aesthetic elements in their versions. After comparison and contrast, the author thinks that both versions are successful in retaining and reproducing the original aesthetic messages in their own ways, but in general, Jia’s version is better than Sheng’s version in the aspect of the retainment of original rhetorical devices, meaning accuracy and the representation of overall effect.On the basis of the comparative study of the original The Scarlet Letter and its two Chinese versions, certain translation strategies related to aesthetic representation are generalized and suggested by the author of this thesis with the intention of reminding translators that in the process of translation, not only the content of literary works, especially classic works, requires faithful conversion but also the aesthetic elements of source language text should be preserved and represented by adopting certain strategies in order to fully realize the aesthetic value of source language text.The study of The Scarlet Letter from the perspective of translation aesthetics is a meaningful attempt, and the author hopes that this study can contribute to the re-translation of classic literary works such as The Scarlet Letter. In the meantime, this thesis also proves that translation aesthetics proposed by Liu Miqing can be and should be applied to the study of literary works, and that the theory is of great significance in the study of novel. It is hoped that this study will be of some help to the theoretical study and practical work of the translation of literary works.