A Study Of Yang Xianyi And Gladys Yang's Drama Translation From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

On November 23,2009, one of China's most acclaimed translator Yang Xianyi passed away. He and his late wife Gladys Yang exhausted all their life in translation especially in translation of Chinese classical literature, making tremendous contribution to China's translation cause.The regret is that there are rare their works talking about translation theory. Thus, it is necessary for us to conduct detailed studies in order to appreciate their translation principles. But there exist two issues:for one thing, studies and comments of their translations mainly focus on such most well-known classics as A Dream of Red Mansions, The Book of Songs, etc, which is no more than an ice's berg compared with their over 40 translated books and articles of Chinese classical and contemporary literature. Therefore, it asks more study in depth and width. Drama translation is an essential part to a systematic study of their translation whereas it draws inadequate attention; for another thing, despite books and articles about their translation principles are flourishing in years, they unanimously took "faithfulness" and "smoothness", and the former characteristic in particular, for the first place. This probably results from the previous issue that is the confinement of studying sphere. However, "faithfulness", or in other word, adhering to source text-oriented so as to maintain linguistic features and cultural connotations is nothing but one prominent facet of their translation criterion. Another important facet, to be target language reader-oriented and to meet their needs, is inviting more study. Only by these can an objective and full-around evaluation be reached.Reception Aesthetics, as a literary criticism theory, attaches great importance to the role of readers and emphasizes on their reception instead of starting from source-text and ending with translated version. As a matter of fact, target language readers will have their prescribed standpoints, notions and aesthetic gauge which constitute their horizon of expectations due to their distinctive thinking way, knowledge structure, and cultural background. Hence, the translator should consider and construct the target readers' horizon of expectations, shorten the aesthetic distance between their horizon of expectations and the translated version on the one hand; and the translator should also maintain certain indeterminacy to arouse readers'interest lest artistic value of source text be lost.Although classical dramas are precious legacy of a country and even the world at large, their translation studies are still on the marginal place in the area of literature translation and have not receive due attention. So much so that this thesis will do a case study of Selected Plays of Guan Hanqing based on Reception Aesthetics theory in order to figure out how Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang have transmitted Chinese classical drama to the target readers through adopting readers-oriented measures. It is hoped that this thesis might contribute a little to the study of their translation art.