On Wang Rongpei’s English Translation Of The Handan Dream From The Perspective Of Reception Theory

The Handan Dream is written by the famous Chinese dramatist Tang Xianzu of the Ming Dynasty in 16th-century China. The story is adapted from Shen Jiji’s romance story A Tale Within the Pillow. The first English version of The Handan Dream is translated by Professor Wang Rongpei. His English translation is characterized by its “spirit transmission and meaning conveyance”. To make his translation more acceptable, Wang always takes the target readers into consideration. Through the analysis of the literature review, it is found that few studies of English translation of The Handan Dream have been done from the perspective of reception theory, which is the innovation of this thesis.Reception theory, also called Reception Aesthetics, was put forward by Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser in Germany in 1960 s. Ever since then, a new field of translation studies has opened for researchers to turn their attention to the reader’s role and participation. Reception theory takes hermeneutics and phenomenology as its base, which transfer the center of literary research from the text to the reader. The theory holds that the translator has his horizon of expectation, which fuses with that of the reader, and finally a thorough interpretation is realized by readers in their reading process. Otherwise, literary works would be meaningless without reader’s participation. According to reception theory, the interpretation process is essentially a process of re-creation in the reader’s mind.On the basis of reception theory, an exemplification has been made on Wang Rongpei’s translation of The Handan Dream from three aspects: “horizon of expectation”, “places of indeterminacy and concretization” and “the reader’s role and status”. The study focuses on how horizon of expectations influence his translation practice and how Wang takes his target readers into consideration while doing translation, how places of indeterminacy and concretization leave room for readers to imagine and reproduce the same aesthetic value of the original work, and what role does the reader play in reading the translated workThe focus of this study, however, is not on Wang Rongpei’s translation strategies and theories, but on his horizon of expectation, or on how he takes the target readers’ reception ability into full consideration. The findings of this study indicate that reception theory can be used to analyze the translation of Chinese classical literary works and Wang’s horizon of expectation affects his comprehension and translation of The Handan DreamIn the Introduction part of the thesis, literary reviews are first made on the studies of the application of reception theory on translation works and studies of the English translation of The Handan Dream both at home and aboard. The elaboration has been done in this part on the main concepts of reception theory, especially Jauss’ s “horizon of expectation”, and Iser’s “places of indeterminacy and concretization” and Jauss & Holub’s “reader’s role and status”. Then in Chapter one, two and three, exemplifications are further made respectively on the three main concepts. Based on an in-depth study and comparison between the original work and the translation, we have found that Wang Rongpei has provided the reader with both faithful rendition and linguistic beauty in the translation. Therefore, it is concluded in the final part of the thesis that firstly, Wang Rongpei’s horizon of expectation as a translator not only influences his comprehension of the source text but also has impact on his translation. Secondly, through the respective analysis of Wang’s reader-centered treatment of The Handan Dream, it can be seen that Wang fully takes target readers into consideration. Thirdly, on the basis of faithfulness, Wang Rongpei creatively fuses his own horizon of expectation with that of readers so that the translation is well accepted by them. Finally, without readers’ participation, the literary work is meaningless.Therefore the present study has both theoretical and practical significance. Firstly, reception theory can be regarded as a new angle for studying the English translation of The Handan Dream. Secondly, this study has done its contribution to the study of translation of Chinese classical literary works. The research findings proves that due attention should be shifted to the possible influence of the translator’s horizon of expectation on the translation. Thirdly, target reader’s role and status should be taken into consideration in the translating process. Finally, study of the English translation of The Handan Dream from different perspectives may broaden the understanding view so that a more comprehensive judgment of the literary work may be presented to the world.