A Literal Stylistic Perspective to the Comparison and Appreciation of Translated Versions of Poetry: Illustrated by Two Chinese Versions of Yeats’ Poem "When You are Old"

Based on the literary stylistic analysis methods proposed by Leech and Short, this paper analyzes Yeats’ poem When You are Old and its two Chinese versions translated respectively by Yuan Ke-jia and Fu Hao from four aspects, namely vocabulary, grammar, figures of speech, cohesion and context, so as to closely examine the two versions’ preservation of the original poems stylistic features. The results show that: in handling the original poem, Fu Haos version is more faithful while Yuan Ke-jias version is more flexible. Both versions have some defects in keeping the style of the original poem. Thus, it is necessary to introduce literary stylistics to poetry translation to raise translators’ stylistic awareness, so that they can better grasp the aesthetic function and stylistic values of poetic language.