Effects Of Readers' Cultural Backgrounds On Translation Strategies-with Reference To Three English Versions Of Fu Sheng Liu Ji

In late 1960s and early 1970s, Receptive Aesthetics appeared in the Federal Republic of Germany. Its representatives were Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser who proposed that aesthetic studies be mainly concerned with the reception, response, reading process and aesthetic experience of readers, and the role of reception in the social function of literature. They maintained that dynamic communication between production, reception, authors, works and readers should be studied by asking and answering questions and giving explanations. They demanded that history of literature come out from a dead end and be studied by examining aesthetic experience under historic and social circumstances.This paper, based on the framework of receptive aesthetics theory, is about the study on the effects of readers'cultural backgrounds on translation strategies with reference to three English versions of Fu Sheng Liu Ji. The autobiography Fu Sheng Liu Ji by Shen Fu in Qing dynasty has many versions in foreign languages. The English versions came into being in 1936, 1960 and 1983 respectively. The readers of these versions are in different historical periods and have different cultural backgrounds. What effects do they have on translation strategies? This paper begins with receptive aesthetic analyses of the relationships between and effects of culture and time, readers'cultural backgrounds and translation, and the culture-load relationship between a translation and its original work. Then the author deals with problems in translation arising from differences in readers'cultural backgrounds. In the following part, the author elaborates on the relationship between readers'culture backgrounds and translation strategies of three English versions of Fu Sheng Liu Ji and studies the effects of readers in different historical cultural backgrounds on the choice of translation strategies by comparing readers'cultural backgrounds, cultural understanding, readers'responses, etc.The main approaches adopted in this paper are comparison, induction, and causality analysis and retroactive method of logical positivism. This paper approaches translation strategies from a new angle by using a combined method of diachronic study and receptive aesthetics to probe into translations of a novel in different historical periods instead of synchronic study which is often used by most researchers of translation. Among many findings, readers'cultural information, readers'cultural understanding, readers'responses and the theory of"empathy"and"sympathy"advanced by the author can be applied to the analyses of most translations, esp. those whose original works are difficult to understand such as novels with cultural features peculiar to a people.In the last part, the author concludes that though they are translated in different historical periods and different translation strategies are employed, the three English versions of Fu Sheng Liu Ji have something in common, that is, the translators of the three English versions all take into consideration readers'cultural backgrounds and try to enable readers to be empathic and sympathetic with the readers of the original work. The author of this paper suggests that, when translating, one should look into readers'cultural backgrounds. Translators nowadays should think about in what cultural backgrounds the readers are and what translation strategies should be adopted accordingly. The author proposes disabusing readers of possible mistaken ideas or clarifying texts by choosing the methods of paraphrase, annotation, diagrammatic presentation, or giving related links on the internet so as to increase the possibility of translators'successfully conveying the cultural information as in the original works, to enable the cultural understanding and responses of readers of translations to be close to that of readers of the source language, and to cause readers of translations to achieve the effect of"empathy"and"sympathy"with readers of the source language.