The English Translation Of Classical Chinese Drama From The Perspective Of Translation Aesthetics

Nanke Ji(The Nanke Dream),one of the "Four Linchuan Dreams" by Tang Xianzu,a famous playwright in the Ming Dynasty,is a representative work in the history of classical Chinese drama.Wang Rongpei's English translation of Nanke Ji is included in his The Complete Dramatic Works of Tang Xianzu(English edition),whose copyright was sold to a famous British publishing house Bloomsbury in 2017.So Wang Rongpei's translation of Nanke Ji is a typical version for case study of the English translation of classical Chinese drama.Translation aesthetics is the "marriage" of translation and aesthetics.The main research objects of translation aesthetics are aesthetic subject,aesthetic object and aesthetic value in translation.One of the aims of translation aesthetics is to realize the artistry of translation by means of basic aesthetic principles.Classical Chinese drama,which fully conveys phonetic,morphological and semantic beauty,has rich aesthetic value at linguistic level.Besides,the emotions and thoughts in classical Chinese drama also have aesthetic value.Therefore,the study on the English translation of classical Chinese drama from the theoretical perspective of translation aesthetics is conducive to conveying the beauty of Chinese language and culture.The author of this thesis discusses how Wang Rongpei reproduces the aesthetic value of Nanke Ji in the following six aspects:(1)Acoustic agreeability.The characters'libretti and spoken parts with poetic characteristics in Nanke Ji follow certain end rhymes and flat-sharp pattern in Chinese.In Wang's translation,"aabb" or "abab" rhyme schemes which are commonly used in English poems as well as alliterative reduplication,rhyming reduplication and exact reduplication are used to reproduce the metrical and rhythmic beauty of the original.(2)Refined expressions.The characters in Nanke Ji have distinct personalities and language styles.Four-character patterns are used to make the language compact.In Wang's translation,literary expressions and metrical patterns are used for characters of high social status;colloquial expressions and sentence with simple structures are used for characters of lower social status.Borrowing translation from fixed English idioms and free translations are used to reproduce the compactness of four-character patterns.(3)Syntactic rhetorical devices.Repetition,parallelism,inversion and antithesis are used to strengthen characters'emotional intensity and coordinate the rhyme of sentences in Nanke Ji.In Wang's translation,the syntactic devices in the original are reproduced through the adjustment of sentence order and the reconstruction of sentence patterns.(4)Rich emotions.Tang Xianzu,as the advocator of "utmost emotion",reveals in Nanke Ji good emotions(the sincerity between human beings)as well as evil emotions(the desire for fame and fortune).In Wang's translation,the rich emotions of characters are reproduced by cutting down the numbers of words,adding exclamation marks and concretizing abstract expressions.(5)Imagery implications.There are many depictions of characters,scenes and events to heighten environmental atmosphere and flesh out characters in Nanke Ji.In Wang's translation,the imagery beauty is vividly reproduced through the rhymes and parallel structures of words or phrases.(6)Cultural connotations.Tang Xianzu presents the unique charm of traditional Chinese culture through literary allusions and Buddhist thoughts in Nanke Ji.In Wang's translation,most cultural allusions are literally translated if the translation is readable,otherwise Wang tends to reproduce the content rather than the form of them.Buddhist terms are literally translated Meanwhile,the translator specifies and concretizes the meanings of Buddhist thoughts in different contexts so as to demonstrate the rich connotations of Buddhism.Through the study on the aesthetic reproduction of Nanke Ji in Wang Rongpei's translation from the theoretical perspective of translation aesthetics,the author of this thesis hopes to provide some reference on how to reproduce the aesthetic value of classical Chinese drama in translation.Meanwhile,the author hopes this thesis can serve as a supplement to the research material of translation aesthetics.