A Comparative Study Of Culture-loaded Terms In Two English Versions Of Teahouse From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

As the magnum opus of Lao She, Teahouse is not only the classic representativeof Chinese drama, but also the treasures of Art Gallery. It vividly describes the socialchanges and the people’s miserable life in hot water during the50years from the lateQing dynasty to the Post-War Ⅱ. Although there are just three acts, it profoundlyreflects the historical and cultural connotations, and contains high artistic values.Teahouse covers a lot of culture-loaded words, which are carrying the culturalconnotations that are unique to China. Therefore, the translation of culture-loadedterms plays a giant motivational effect on the spreading of Chinese culture.The theory of Reception Aesthetics was created in1960s, and the representativesare Jauss and Iser. As a new theory of literary criticism, it has broken the traditionaltext-oriented thinking patterns, while highlight the dominant role of the readers.Literature is created for readers. Therefore, it is the readers that evaluate the qualities.The theory of Reception Aesthetics took literary works as the artifact completed byboth reproduction and acceptance. Jauss and other scholars conducted interpretationand analysis of reception aesthetics, and summarizes the basic concepts, includinghorizon of expectation, readers’ role, fusion of horizons, aesthetic distance vision andso on. These thoughts have a profound and positive significance on the translation ofculture-loaded words. This paper will focus on the culture-loaded terms in theTeahouse, and does a comparative analysis the translation strategies adopted in thetwo English versions explore the proper translation approaches under the guidance ofreception aesthetics.This paper will conduct a research on the significance of the theory of receptionaesthetics based on the comparative analysis of the translation strategies ofculture-loaded terms in two English versions of Teahouse, which are translated byYing Ruocheng and Howard respectively. Ying Ruocheng ’s translation version is with concise language, and it is easy for foreign audience to accept. Moreover, Languagewith full of tension and vitality helped actors perform on stage. While Howard’sEnglish version are with comprehensive information, and retained the originalfeatures. Annotations of specific culture-loaded terms help facilitate the understandingof the target readers. The different translation strategies of cultural-loaded terms areadopted in two versions. Ying Ruocheng’s translation is mainly with domestication,While Howard gives priority to foreignization. To a certain extent, both of them hasachieved the horizons of expectations of the readers, but failed to achieve theappropriate aesthetic distance. Therefore, the author tentatively puts forward thetranslation strategies under the guidance of reception aesthetics, in order to achievethe best aesthetic effect.