| Cao Minglun, as the outstanding Sichuan translator, translates the world famous classic book The Essays of Francis Bacon successfully. Though a lot of Essays' translated versions exist in China, Cao's is accepted better and is regarded as the one closest to the original text in style of all the entire versions. His version fully realizes the representation of language features of the source text: compact, classical, and elegant. Based on the theory of translation aesthetics, the author makes a comprehensive and deep analysis on the representation of aesthetic information in the formal system of language, which contains the basic three linguistic levels: the representation of beauty in sound, reconstruction of aesthetic information in lexis, and recreation of aesthetic elements in syntax.Through extensive cases study, the writer finds on the basis of faithful translation, Cao usually can reproduce the aesthetic information of the ST in his version to the largest extent. If the content of the ST has equivalence in Chinese and English languages or cultures, he can transfer it well. While, if the there is no counterpart of ST in Chinese, Mr. Cao will adopt some compensation strategies flexibly and his target text finally also can achieve a similar artistic effect as well as equivalent readers' response. Overall, all of his translation methods or strategies are in accordance with his essay translation principle, namely, to realize the form similarity on the premise of spirit similarity. Consequently, the readers of his version can not only appreciate the meaningful content of the Essays, but also the concise, old and elegant style of it. The author sincerely hopes that this thesis may shed some light on the study and practice of essay translation. |
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