1。2Research Purpose and Significance 

The purpose of the research is not to draw a conclusion on which version is better, but means to find out the gain and loss of the aesthetic information in two versions, to judge translators’ performance in representing different aesthetic values and to establish a more close connection between the theories of translation aesthetics and the practices of literary criticism。 

The guidance of translation aesthetics offers us a frame and some criteria for judging versions, in return, the concrete methodologies revealed in versions can also rich the system of translation aesthetics。 Some of these methods are commonly and intentionally used, which can be concluded as exemplars for instruction, and some others are ingeniously or unconsciously used, which can be further explored for the possibility to generalization。 

2。 Literature Review

2。1The Historical Origin of Translation Aesthetics

Aesthetics is an indispensable component of Chinese culture。 Early aesthetic thoughts can be traced back to pre-Qin scholars and exerted huge influence on subsequent creation of arts and literature。 Prominent philosopher Lao-Tzu stated in chapter eight-one of Tao Te Ching that “The believable words are not beautiful, the beautiful words are not believable”, which had been serving as the credendum for later scripture translators who believed the meaning of the Buddha should be translated in an easy-to-understand manner without literary adornment。 Such plain and direct translation prevailed until the end of 4th century when the elegance and literary flavor in translation began to be valued。 “The unity of ornamentation and natural substance” as well as “the golden mean” embodied in Confucianism became the aesthetic guidance。 Huiyuan's (334 - 416 AD) view on translation was a typical presentation of such aesthetic values。 He advocated to avoid extremes of elegance and plainness。 In the late 19th century, with the introduction of foreign thoughts, Chinese translation activities met another bloom, consequently producing lots of translation principles such as Yan Fu’s “faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance” (1898), which means good translation is one that is true to the original in spirit, accessible to the target reader in meaning, and attractive to the target reader in style。 Subsequent Lin Yutang’s “fidelity, smoothness and beauty” (1933), Fu Lei’s “spiritual resemblance” (1951), Qian Zhongshu’s “reaching acme of perfection” (1964) and Xu Yuanchong’s theory of “beauty in three aspects: sound, sense and form” (1979) all contained aesthetic colors。

2。2 The Modern Development of Translation Aesthetics论文网

Although traditional translation theories were abundant in China, they didn’t develop into a scientific system。 Employing some impression terms, these theories put emphasis on intuitive feelings of inpiduals and cannot be clearly explained or specifically defined, thus they cannot analyze structures of works in a scientific way(刘宓庆, 2012:19)。 

From 1980s, translation studies entered a period of expansion, and quantities of western theories were introduced in, most of which were linguistics relevant。 Linguistics hold sway in the western translation studies because the kinship between western languages makes them easier to achieve the cognate equivalence in morphological and syntactic forms (刘宓庆, 2012:44 )。 However, such equivalence can hardly be found between Chinese and English。 Under this background, some scholars proposed a local perspective in translation studies, namely, to establish translation theories with Chinese characteristics。 

Translation aesthetics emerged responding to the call。 On the one hand, we are rich in traditional aesthetic translation theories; on the other hand, Chinese as a language of parataxis lays stress on sentiment rather than on reason, and Chinese character, different from alphabetic writing, is musical, pictograph-based and ideographic, so its beauty can directly appeal to our vision, audition and imagination to arouse an aesthetic feeling inside us。 The combination of translation theories and aesthetics enables us to realize that translation is not only a transfer of information at linguistic levels, but a process of aesthetic representation。 To study translation in the perspective of aesthetics systematically is not only the inheritance of tradition but also a strategic consideration in view of national cultural features and native translation development。