An Analysis Of Howard Goldblatt's Techniques In The English Version Of Lang Tuteng From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

Since the novel Lang Tuteng written by Jiang Rong was published in 2004,it has attracted extensive attention in China.Since Howard Goldblatt translated it into Wolf Totem(1),the English version of Lang Tuteng in 2008,it has raised concern abroad and its influence has been further expanded.Howard Goldblatt is a famous American translator,who has made great achievements in the field of translating Chinese literature works into English.Meanwhile,he has made a great contribution to Chinese characteristic culture “going out”.Wolf Totem has provided positive reference for Chinese literature “going out”.With the development of China's economy and culture,as well as general internationalization trend,a large number of Chinese literature works have been translated into English,entering international book market;nevertheless,not all the translations could be widely accepted or recognized by western readers.The problems that lie in them are worth deeply studying.Reception theory is based on phenomenology and hermeneutics,which points out that all readers have a certain horizon of expectation before reading.When the reader is reading,original horizon of expectation and the text consistently fuse.The reader fills in the blanks in the text and forms a new horizon of expectation.Readers have been promoted to a new unprecedented high level.From the text to the reader,reception theory has provided a new theoretical basis for improving version quality.This thesis analyzed Wolf Totem translated by Howard Goldblatt from the perspective of reception theory,respectively exploring the “omission”,“addition”,“adaption” and other translation techniques aspects in which way to satisfy reader's horizon of expectation,to achieve the fusion of horizons and to reflect reader's important status and role.Wolf Totem,Howard Goldblatt's English version of Lang Tuteng has fully considered the reader's reception capability,reception level and original horizon of expectation.In the meantime,it caters to the reader's aesthetic expectation.As a consequence,the reader could get beautiful aesthetic experience.Through analysis and discussion,this thesis draws a conclusion that the translator should consider the reader's aesthetic expectation to help the reader accept the translation to the greatest extent.In this respect,Howard Goldblatt has provided us with a successful model.This thesis includes five chapters.Chapter one “Introduction” elaborates the research background,research significance,research methodology and thesis structure.Chapter two“Literature Review” concisely illustrates the research status on Wolf Totem.Chapter three“Theoretical Foundation” explains the development of reception aesthetics theory and some main concepts.Chapter four “Wolf Totem and Reception Aesthetics” mainly analyzes the reception aesthetics application in Wolf Totem from three aspects: omission,addition and adaption.This thesis collects fifty-five typical Chinese-English comparison translation instances,analyzes the translation techniques adopted by Howard Goldblatt and gives some feasible suggestions.Chapter five “Conclusion” expounds the main findings and limitations,etc.On the way of Chinese literature going into the world,we should take the target reader element into special consideration to serve the reader based on reception aesthetics theory.Adopting different translation strategies to cater to readers' demand and acceptance ability,therefore it is essential to compromise and adjust properly during the translation process.