Lusiyao Zhang

Lusiyao Zhang

29 May 2023

Translation aesthetics, Lin Yutang, Six Chapters of a Floating Life.

The prose in traditional Chinese literature is beautiful, the form is dispersed but the spirit is not dispersed. However, the prose written in classical Chinese is condensed and uses exact terminology, making the translation of this type of literature more challenging. It is important to assess literary texts using the aesthetics of translation since it serves as a useful guide for translating these literatures. While translation aesthetics refers to the outcome of fusing aesthetics and translation studies, aesthetics is the study of how humans perceive beauty. Liu Miqing suggests in his Introduction to Translation Aesthetics that prose translation should consider the beauty of both formal and non-formal systems. While the non-formal system emphasizes the beauty of emotion and images, the formal system emphasizes the beauty of speech, vocabulary, and grammar. In this paper, Lin Yutang's translation of Six Chapters of a Floating Life will be analyzed in terms of both formal and non-formal system beauty. The beauty of Lin Yutang's translation as it preserves the original work and the beauty of invention based on it will also be examined.

© 2023, the Authors. Published by ISCCAC

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