A Contrastive Study Of The Two Chinese Versions Of The Scarlet Letter From The Perspective Of The Reception Theory

Translation, as the essential means of communication, is an activity of cultural exchange relating to the complicated relationship involving the text, the translator and the reader. However, the traditional translation theories believe that the author is the only person who has the absolute right to interpret the text. As a result, they put a premium on the language transformation and standard translation, the complete equivalence between the translated version and the original text but not on the reader, an essential part of translation.In the 1960s, the appearance of the reception esthetics, also called the reception theory, overcomes the limitations of the traditional translation theory. Reception theory emphasizes the dynamic role of readers. Therefore, the translator is the reader of the original text first, and then the creator of the translated version, which could only be achieved through fusion of expectation, filling in gaps, analysis of indeterminacy and realization of the appealing structure.The thesis consists of four chapters. Chapter one introduces the research background, research significance, research methodology and the structure of the whole thesis. Chapter two introduces the reception theory and its corresponding information. Chapter three is a comparative study of the two Chinese versions of Han Shiheng and Yao Naiqiang to explore how the factors in reception theory affect the translated versions of The Scarlet Letter in terms of reader's horizon of expectations, textual gaps, textual indeterminacy and the appealing structure of the text. Chapter four not only concludes the major findings and some limitations of the thesis but also gives some suggestions to the future study as well.From the perspective of reception theory, a comparative study of two Chinese Versions of The Scarlet Letter is carried out to explore the role of reception theory in translation process which is specified into four aspects: horizon of expectations, indeterminacy, gaps and appealing structure together with the specific translated examples selected so as to analyze the way how the translator as the reader of the original text affects the translated version to prove that reception theory not only is an effective method to understand the different translated versions of the same original text, but reception theory plays an important role during the process of translation.