Translation Aesthetics:an Analysis Of The Chinese Version Of A Song Of Ice And Fire:A Game Of Thrones

In recent years,many excellent fantasy novels have been introduced to Chinese readers.The series of A Song of Ice and Fire,written by the well-known American writer George R.R.Martin,are one of the most remarkable ones.The series have been translated into over 40 languages,and triggered worldwide fantasy craze after the TV adaptation by HBO.With the publication of its Chinese version,studies and researches on the Chinese translation of the series are mounting,but few are from the perspective of translation aesthetics.It is well-know that literature translation and aesthetics are intertwined.As a unique form of art,literature has its certain aesthetic features,which means literature translation should give weight to the reproduction of aesthetic value of the original work.Therefore,it is of great significance to approach literature translation from an aesthetic perspective.To fill the research gaps in this field,the present study intends to analyze the Chinese version of A Song of Ice and Fire: A Game of Thrones according to Liu Miqing’s theory on translation aesthetics.Through corpus-based analysis and close reading,the study aims to explore the reproduction of aesthetic information from two systems,namely the formal system(phonetic level,lexical level and syntactic level)and the informal system(sentiments,ideas,images and artistic conception).From the research results,it is concluded that the translators of the novel pay great attention to the reproduction of aesthetic value in their translation.In the formal system,the phonetic beauty is displayed by a total of 3,914 reduplicated words,2,154 alliterative compounds and 1,614 rhyming compounds,while the lexical beauty is displayed by a total of 3,764 four-character structures.The syntactic beauty is displayed in the adoption of parallel sentences.It is found that the translators have used a considerable amount of reduplicated words,alliterative compounds,rhyming compounds and four-character structures,but the use of parallelism are relatively small.This might be attributed to the genre of the original text.In the informal system,the case-based analysis shows the translators have effective grasp of the images andsentiments of the original text.In a word,with a thorough understanding and appreciation of the emotions and ideas between the lines,the translators have skillfully reproduced the beauty of the original text.Though there exist some flaws,the translation is in good quality in general,attracting more and more readers to the fantasy world.It is hoped that the study can provide a new perspective for future researchers to take when studying the translation of fantasy novels,as well as a reference of strategies for translators to adopt when translating similar genre of literature works.