On The Transference Of Language Figurativeness In The Translation Of Famous Chinese Gardens

As one of the world’s three major garden systems,Chinese garden outstands with its artistic principle of “taking artificiality for heavenly creation”.By blending the art of architecture,literature,painting,calligraphy,sculpture and craftsmanship,Chinese garden develops a style of its own in the world garden history.The soul of Chinese garden lies in the creation of artistic conception,which consists in embodying the poetic feelings and philosophic thoughts with picturesque scenery.It is an artistic state that stirs up the feelings of sight-seers through the arrangement of garden scenes,thus creating a fusion of feelings with natural settings.As the crystallization of Mr.Chen Congzhou’s lifelong study on Chinese gardens,Famous Chinese Gardens makes a profound analysis of the artistic style of all types of gardens in China.Characterized by its prominent style of language figurativeness,the book displays the artistic conception of Chinese gardens to the fullest.The figurativeness of language refers to its function of image expression,in virtue of which,people can express their feelings and emotions more effectively.The use of figurative language also reflects human’s aesthetic nature.However,due to the great disparities in historical and cultural background,social traditions and customs,English and Chinese differ a lot in the expressions of figurativeness.Therefore,how to present the ideological connotations of Chinese gardens in front of the target readers with figurative language which conforms to the thought patterns and language habits of the Westerners to make them understand and accept is a great difficulty in the translation.Famous Chinese Gardens is translated by Ms.Li Mei,a professor from the School of Foreign Languages of Tongji University.The translation reproduces the figurative language style of the original to a large extent.In order to explore how to achieve the most appropriateness in the stylistic correspondence with the original,this thesis,by taking Style Translation Theory as guidance,converts the abstract figurative style into tangible and concrete semiotic system through the identification of stylistic markers in the original.On this basis,a detailed analysis is made on the applications of the three special methods: corresponding,recasting and decoloring,for stylistic transference in the translation.Finally,it is discovered that: corresponding is the most extensive and feasible method,while compared with an excessive pursuit of correspondence in form regardless of the conceptual meaning,recasting and decoloring can also be regarded as sound methods.This thesis is made up of five chapters.Chapter one is introduction,which expounds the background,purpose and significance of the research.Chapter two introduces the previous studies on style and style translation,and elaborates the theoretical framework of the thesis—Style Translation Theory.In chapter three,the author makes a detailed analysis of language figurativeness and its specific embodiment in the original Famous Chinese Gardens.Chapter four deals with the concrete applications of the three special methods for stylistic transference in the translation of Famous Chinese Gardens,and puts forward some humble opinions for the modification of the non-correspondence of style.Chapter five is conclusion,which summarizes the main research findings,points out the limitations of the research,and proposes some suggestions for further study.