Multiple Roles Of The Translator Perceived From Reception Aesthetics

Translation has been an important human communication activity over two thousand years. The traditional translation study was under rigid control of the principle of "faithfulness or equivalence to the original" both in Chinese and western translation history. Meanwhile the subjective role of the translator has been almost completely neglected. With the "cultural turn" of translation study from the linguistic perspective to the cultural perspective and the introduction of reception aesthetics the translation subjectivity is becoming prominent and now the initiative subjectivity of the translator in the translating process is gaining great attention. Reception aesthetics, which stresses the active and dynamic roles of the reader’s participation in formulating the meaning of a text while doing some readings, proposes a new perspective and research method for translation studies. The combination of the reception aesthetics with translation studies enables us to explore more comprehensively the translator’s multiple roles in the translation process.With the founding of hermeneutics and phenomenology, reception aesthetics comes up with such representative viewpoints and key concepts as "aesthetic experience","horizon of expectations" and "fusion of horizons","appealing structure" of the text and "aesthetic distance". Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser are the two representatives of reception aesthetics, who elaborate it in the macro and micro way. Robert Jauss advocates the reader’s horizon of expectations, which is developed from Gadamer’s "horizon" and Heidegger’s "pre-understanding". In his opinion, the translator’s expectation forms in the process of understanding the text should be fused with the original writer’s in order to reach "a fusion of horizons". While Wolfgang Iser puts forward the concept of "appealing structure", based on the concepts of "indeterminacy" and "blank of meaning", he emphasizes that the concretization of a literary work relies on the reader’s active participation in concretizing the "indeterminacy" and filling in the "blank of meaning" during the reception process.In the light of reception aesthetics, this thesis makes a comprehensive study of the translator’s multiple and dynamic roles in the literary translation process with reference to Zeng Hu’s Chinese version of The Thorn Birds as a case study. It finds that the translator’s multiple roles in literary translation proceed on three perspectives:Firstly, as a reader and receptor, the translator reads, interprets the source text and has dialogues with the original author. He/She fuses his/her horizon of expectations with the original author’s through creative reception by concretizing the "indeterminacy" and filling in "blank of meaning". Secondly, as a rewriter and actor, the translator should take into account the target readers’ aesthetic experience and expectations, have considerations for them, and try to shorten the aesthetic distance between the reader’s fixed horizon of expectations and the horizon shown in the target text. Finally, as a mediator and creator, the translator goes between two different cultures. The translator should also take into consideration the lexis and syntax of the discourse, the context and the cultural spirit, as well as historical context, the author’s worldview, writing intention, artistic methods and style, etc during the process of translation. Therefore, translation is not a simple reproduction of the source text, but a creation of the translator, which manifests the translator’s interpretation and concretization of the culture, art, history, etc embodied in the source text.The thesis concludes that the analysis of Zeng Hu’s Chinese version of The Thorn Birds from the perspective of reception aesthetics demonstrates the translator’s active and dynamic roles contribute to the success of his translation work. This thesis is to attract people’s attention to the literary translator and his/her multiple roles in literary translation by summing up the qualifications of the translator and the translator’s active and dynamic roles. Theoretically, we intend to further develop the comprehensive framework displaying the affective dimension in the translator’s active and dynamic roles from the perspective of reception aesthetics. Practically, we analyze some translation approaches and strategies applied in translating The Thorn Birds, in the hope of providing some reference to literature translation study and practice to a certain extent and further improving the perspective for re-examining the various phenomena in literary translation, by which we can make evaluation of the quality of literary translation texts more objectively, comprehensively, impartially and scientifically, thus helpful for providing some valuable reference to translation study. And the aesthetics of reception may shed light on literary translation and criticism and enlighten future translators in turning out better creations.