A Reception Aesthetics Approach To Translator's Subjectivity

The translator is undoubtedly the most active factor in translation. With the cultural turn in translation studies, the translator's identities and roles have emerged from obscurity and come to light. Increasing academic attention is being paid to the subjectivity of the translator, which consequently becomes a new focus of translation studies. Reception aesthetics emphasizes indeterminacy in literature works and subjectivity in readers' reading process, providing a distinctive perspective for translation studies.From the perspective of reception aesthetics, translator's subjectivity is of vital importance and well deserves our critical attention, for in the translation process the translator is not only the subject of reception, and he is also the subject of creation. On the one hand, the translator, as the subject of reception, should actively communicate with the source text to achieve the maximum fusion of horizons between the translator and the source text, concretizing "spots of indeterminacy" or "blanks" contained in the source text. On the other hand, the translator, as the subject of creation, should take into consideration target language readers' reception level and aesthetic demands so as to achieve the fusion of horizon between target language readers and the target text and well reproduce the source text.Shakespeare's sonnets rank among the best in the history of world poetry. Its translation is always a challenging topic in literary translation circles. Literary translation is difficult, poetry translation is more difficult, let alone the translation of Shakespeare's sonnets. The present study focuses on three Chinese versions of Liang Zongdai, Tu An and Gu Zhengkun, the three important poets and scholars in modern China. Based on reception aesthetics, the thesis attempts to explore the three translators' subjectivity in aspects of form, content, theme as well as style. It is found that due to the exertion of translators' subjectivity, different versions of Shakespeare's Sonnets have taken on different characteristics. This thesis also points out distinctive features of the three Chinese versions, their different translation strategies or principles employed in the translation process.This thesis is but a tentative study of translator's subjectivity from the perspective of reception aesthetics. It is the author's hope that the thesis might, in one way or another, push forward translation studies, especially on the roles of the translator in the process of translation.