2。 Literature Review

     In the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the word "aesthetics” is defined as a branch of philosophy, which deals with the nature of beauty, the creation of beauty, the appreciation of beauty, the nature of art, and taste。 The term of aesthetics was firstly put forward by German philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714-1762) in the 18th century。 In China, aesthetic master Zhu Guangqian defined aesthetics as the following: Aesthetics is the feature or quantity from which some objective things, quantities and configurations adapt to subjective ideologies, and thy combine or blend together to form a complete image。(Zhu Guangqian, 2004)。 The particular aesthetic characteristic of poetry translation reveals that aesthetics is an important principle in analyzing the artistic value of both source and translated texts。 Translation theory has always been inseparable from aesthetics no matter in China or aboard。

2。1 Previous studies on translation aesthetics  论文网

     In the west, aesthetics applied in the translation studies long time ago。 For almost 1800 years, from Marcus Thllius Cicero to Martin Luther and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, translation theory nearly connected with literary aesthetic translation。 In his book After Babel, Geoge Steiner (1998: 248) pided the literature on western translation theory and history into four periods。 The first period called Classical Period starting from a Roman philosopher, politician and rhetorical master named Marcus Tullius Cicero(106-43BC) who preferred sense-to-sense translation to word-to-word translation。 This period was the beginning of the western translation theory and translators focused on keeping the resemblance in spirit with the original during translating。 The second period called Ancient Period lasting from the 1890s to the 1940s。 The representative figure was Valery Larbaud。 In this stage, translation theories were heavily influenced by philosophy due to the spread of Christianity。 In this period, translators payed attention to culture-art and religion translation。 The third period called Pre-Modern Period。 John Dryden was the first one who recognized and described translation as an art。 And then in 1971, Alexander Fraser Tytler put forward Three Principles of Translation。 In this period, translation theory mainly aimed to recreate the original truth and beauty of the original text。 The last period was Modern Times, modern linguistics began to enter into academic area in1950。 Translation theories gradually turned to linguistics。

     In Chinese aesthetic history, Lao Zi (around 571B。C。-471B。C。) was the pioneer。 He was the founder of Taoism and put forward “ beautiful words damage faithfulness and vice versa”。 Aesthetics has a long history。 The first exploration of Chinese translation aesthetics should go back to Zhi Qian who quoted Lao Zi’s maxim to defend literal adherence to the source text and used it as the basic principle to translate Buddhist scriptures about 1700 years ago。 In late Qing Dynasty, Yan Fu put forward his standards for translation: faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance which has been regarded as a universal criterion of translation in China for a long time。 Afterwards, Fu Lei’s principle of spiritual conformity which strove for similarity in spirit rather than similarity in form was then developed by Lin Yutang’s “transferring of meaning and conveyance of spirit”。 Later, Qian Zhongshu’s view of “sublimation” marked the fourth stage of Chinese translation thought。 Then traditional translation theories are understood, analyzed and developed and become an important part of translation aesthetics in the contemporary society。 Xu Yuanchong, Liu Miqing, Fu Zhongxuan, Xi Yongji and Mao Ronggui are five representative translators in the field of contemporary translation aesthetics。 Although some systematic researches have been done in this period, more efforts are needed to make contributions to Chinese translation aesthetics。 文献综述 从三美原则角度分析李白诗歌翻译(2):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_200866.html