A Translation Report Of They Could Have Named Her Anything(Excerpts)

Translation is an intercultural activity which is closely related to language and culture.Literature translation has occupied an important position in the field of translation and young adult literature translation has attracted the attention of more and more scholars.This translation report is written under the guidance of the theory of reception aesthetics with the case analysis of They Could Have Named Her Anything,which is written by the contemporary American Latina woman writer Stephanie Jimenez.It is a young adult novel,which mainly tells the story of a seventeen-year-old girl Maria Ann Rosario,who tries to adjust herself to her private high school life as one of the only Latina students in order to achieve her ambition of becoming a college student.The novel has received much praise for dissecting racism,class,betrayal,family and friendship,etc.in the capitalist society.Starting from the English-Chinese translation practice of the first and second chapters of They Could Have Named Her Anything,this report explores how Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser’s theory of reception aesthetics,particularly “horizon of expectation” can guide the translation of young adult novel and what kind of translation strategies are effective for its translation.The translation of literary works can be regarded as a process of literary acceptance and construction.In this process of aesthetic acceptance,literary works and translation texts are objects,while translators and readers are subjects.Reception aesthetics lays great emphasis on readers’ reception and their horizon of expectation for the appreciation of literary works and it requires translators to regard target readers as center of translation activities and fully consider their reading expectation.Through the detailed analysis of a lot of translation examples,it is found that the translation of this kind of literary texts should be reader-centered,taking adolescent’s horizon of expectation such as cultural background,ideology,moral sentiment,cognitive psychology,aesthetic taste,language style,life experience,thinking pattern,intuitive ability and receptivity,etc.into full consideration and the translation strategies such as word selection,amplification,sentence processing,and figures of speech,etc.,should be adopted to meet the aesthetic taste and receptivity of teenagers.This translation report can not only help Chinese teenagers to better understand the Hispanic American novel They Could Have Named Her Anything but also provide reference for young adult novel translation.