Reception Theory And Re-creation In Literary Translation

Translation is a communication and negotiation between two cultures. A translator is a subject of the process during which, he is required to be the inter-subject with the author of the original text, its readers, and their respective subjectivities. Subjectivity demands purpose, initiative, and creativity. Consequentially subjective activity is required, which is a typical characteristic of subjectivity. Regardless, the translator should express his personal perspectives within a narrow scope of limitations and constraints. Reception Theory insists on the construction of subjectivity in literature, which provides new methodological basis for literary translation. Some significant concepts in Reception Theory, such as "schematized structure", "blanks", "indeterminacy", "horizons of expectations" and "fusion of horizons", make people begin to view literary translation from an entirely new angle. Guided by Reception Theory, literary translation is no longer a one-way process which is text-centered and transmitted by a translator with readers on the receiving end, but an ever-going two-way communicative process carrying out the dialogue between the text and its readers, between its author and readers. In the process of literary translation, a translator is required to manifest three distinct literary identities, namely: a reader, an interpreter, and a writer (a re-creator of literature). As a reader, the translator is required to manipulate his feelings, aesthetic values, imagination, and other literature abilities to realize a concretization of the "indeterminacy" and "blanks" in the text, and conduct a dialogue with the content of the text. During the process, the translator must continuously adjust his "pre-structure" to reach a "fusion of horizons" and eventually enact a complete re-construction of the meaning, and premise of the12Reception Theory and Re-creation in Literary Translationliterary text. Comprehension and interpretation of the content reside in ordinary literary activities, but in the process of language conversion, the translator exerts his re-creation of literature to the greatest extreme. As the depth of the literary text increases, the wealth of aesthetic information and cultural meanings are incrementally difficult to translate, requiring increased re-creation of the author for the translation, and therefore the more evident the subjectivity of the translator becomes in the translation process. All subjects act upon objects, so inevitably, they are bound to be subjected to limitations and constraints of objects, which means that a translator cannot exert subjective activity at random. This translation study utilizes Reception Theory as the means to explore re-creation in literary translation. On the basis of theoretical explanation, the author points out that re-creation in literary translation should conform to some basic criteria, if it wants to seek the universal receptability, as well as illustrate her paper with some practical examples to stress these criteria.