Beyond Literal Meaning: Xu Yuanchong and Lin Yutang's Translation Strategies for "Prelude to Water Melody" in Cultural, Poetic, and Rhythmic Dimensions

Su Shi's “The Midautumn Festival Tune: Prelude to Water Melody” is a treasure of Chinese classical poetry. The purpose is to analysis of Xu Yuanchong's and Lin Yutang's translations in terms of the “three beauties (beauty of form, beauty of meaning, and beauty of sound)” through Venuti's (1995) foreignization and Newmark's (1988) semantic/communicative translation approach as well as Nida functional equivalence theory. Analysis reveals Xu's translation prioritized foreignization to retain Chinese aesthetic norms, while Lin adopted domestication strategy. Statistical analysis shows that Xu's translation is more faithful to the Taoist cosmology and Song dynasty aesthetic, whereas Lin's achieves higher emotional resonance among non-Chinese readers. Through a detailed analysis of each line of the words, the differences in formal structure, semantic communication, phonological rhythm, and cultural strategies between the two translations are revealed through a sentence-by-sentence comparison, exploring the characteristics and differences of the two translations in terms of form, rhythm, imagery communication, and cultural connotations, and exploring which translation is closer to the aesthetics of classical Chinese poetry revealing its translation strategies and its impact on the Western readers' understanding of the meaning and culture of ancient Chinese poetry to provide reference to the study of ancient poetry translation.