A Contrastive Study On Two English Versions Of Li Yu’s Poems From The Perspective Of “Three Beauties”

As a distinctive part of Chinese culture,Chinese poetry has a very long history,condensing the unique wisdom achievements of the Chinese people in literature from ancient times to the present and becomes an important way for the world to learn about Chinese culture.Li Yu’s special political identity and literary talent endow his poetry with unique emotion and charm,which is worthy of research and exploration for more poetry lovers.Based on Xu Yuanchong’s “Three Beauties” theory,this research analyzes 33 poems in both Xu Yuanchong’s and Daniel Bryant’s translation versions of Li Yu’s poems.There are three purposes for conducting this research: the first one is to analyze the degree of preservation and realization of aesthetics in two translation versions from the perspective of three beauties;the second purpose aims to summarize the similarities and differences between two translation versions in order to provide a more objective reference for future scholars;the third one is to explore translation strategies for achieving aesthetic value in Chinese poems translation so as to better promote Chinese culture to the world.In accordance with the definition and embodiment of “Three Beauties”in previous research,this paper makes a classification of the beauty in meaning,sound and form in the original text of Li Yu’s poems.There are three levels involved in meaning beauty,which respectively are image beauty,rhetorical beauty and artistic conception reconstruction.The study of sound beauty includes end rhyme and reduplication in Li Yu’s poems and form beauty analyzes the two translations from the aspects of sentence structure and sentence length.Through the analysis,it is found that similarities of preserving original beauty in two versions are reflected in:1.The non-cultural-loaded word images preserve the original image beauty to the greatest extent in the two translations;2.In the level of form beauty,sentence structure and sentence length in original text is better preserved in two translation versions.The differences lie in the representation of image beauty(numerals and color words),rhetoric devices translation,artistic conception reproduction and the sound beauty in end rhyme and reduplication.Meanwhile,this research shows that Xu Yuanchong’s translation method is flexible to realize a dynamic balance of aesthetics at different level;Daniel Bryant’s translation makes good use of subordinates to present the more specific and distinctive characteristics of some images,but literal translation affects the expression of sound beauty to a certain extent.Based on the analysis of the two translation versions,the author attempts to summarize the reasons for differences between the two translations from the differences between Chinese and Western cultures and personal in aesthetic perception and summarizes the effective ways to achieve Chinese-English translation from deepening and simplifying translation,expecting to make contribution to the practice and research of Chinese poetry translation.