Retranslation Of Literary Works From The Perspective Of Reception Theory

As is known to all, the development of literary criticism enlarges our scope to approach many translation issues and it is the tendency to integrate literary criticism theories with translation studies in recent years. Retranslation is a common phenomenon in translation field and the author of this paper intends to probe into this issue with the help of reception theory.Reception theory appeared in the 1960's in Germany and with its fresh viewpoints exerts a unique influence upon literature as well as literary translation circle. Opposite to traditional translation studies which focus on pursuing the standard translation and the equivalence between the original text and the target text, reception theory puts great emphasis on the text-reader relationship and the readers' initiative. The author of this paper employs two important terms in reception theory 'horizon of expectation' or 'indeterminacy' respectively proposed by Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser, two major representatives of the Constance School, to lay out her discussion. According to Jauss, the 'horizon of expectation' refers to the partial and moving perspective of human experience and knowledge. There is pre-understanding and pre-knowledge structure in the reader's mind before he begins to read a new literary work. Horizon of expectation keeps changing as time goes by. In literary translation, the differentiation in the horizon of expectation between the original text and the translator and the consideration for the readers' horizon of expectation give rise to the different interpretation and diversity of translations. Meanwhile, reception theory also claims that any literary work is not closed or hermetic. Instead, they are open and include many spots of indeterminacy which call for readers' participation in the reading process, and only in this way can the meaning of the literary work be fulfilled. And this process is called concretization.Based on these viewpoints, the author of this paper will approach retranslation phenomenon with the application of reception theory for the purpose of justifying the necessity, inevitability and significance of retranslation. To make the explanation more concrete, she employs the famous English novel David Copperfield as the case study. Three most widely accepted Chinese versions of this novel are chosen for a detailed contrastive study. Instead of evaluating the relative gains and losses in the three versions, this paper only intends to investigate the reasons why this novel is translated again and again, thus boasting so many different versions. The reasons accounting for the differences existing among the three versions can justify the retranslation of this novel.The whole thesis will focus on the following three points: (1)text is open allowing for different interpretation; (2)literary translation is a process combining different subject's horizon of expectation; (3)both translators and TL readers' reception ability and needs affect the development of literary translation and the life of literary works.