Analysis On Translators’ Subjectivity In Children’s Literature Translation From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

Reading good children’s literature,including those translated from foreign countries,is essential to early education of children and has a profound impact on their lives.However,compared with the abundant achievements of researches in children’s literature abroad,researches at home are deficient in results,mediocre in quality,and one-sided in perspective.Moreover,the development in theory and practice of children’s literature translation in China are unbalanced: translations of children’s literature are emerging in endlessly,while there are few authoritative studies specializing in children’s literature translation.In the absence of inspection and evaluation,it is difficult to guarantee the quality of children’s literature translation which is growing at an alarming speed.Even worse,defective translated works are likely to have negative effects on children readers.Therefore,it is of great significance for the academic circle to devote to the in-depth study on children’s literature translation and to develop specialized translation theories on children’s literature basing on the needs of children readers.Reception aesthetics,represented by Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser of the Constance School,is an independent and self-contained theoretical system that puts emphasis on the social effects of literary works as well as the active participatory role of readers.Many leading scholars in translation studies at home and abroad have proved that it is significant and practical as well to introduce reception aesthetics into translation studies,which provides a new approach for study on children’s literature translation.From the perspective of reception aesthetics,the subjectivity of translators,which poses as one of the hot topics in translation studies since the cultural turn in the 1970 s,can be largely manifested in the whole translation process.Translators are the first readers of children’s literature and the bridge between the source text and children readers in the target context.On the one hand,the translator,in view of indeterminacies in the work,should subjectively and actively read and interpret the text as the first reader,and strive to achieve the maximum degree of horizon fusion between himself and the source text.On the other hand,the translator,as the creator of the target text,needs to attend to children readers’ horizon of expectations and translates creatively so as to realize the horizon fusion of the children readers and the source text.The Water Babies,as the representative work of Charles Kingsley,is considered to be the first children’s fantasy in UK and one of the world’s top ten philosophical fairy tales.However,there are vey few academic studies on this book in China despite its massive amount of Chinese versions.The only existing researches mostly are focusing on the literary level,and there is only one study in the translation field.Therefore,it is believed that to carry out a comparative study on translator’s subjectivity in translating this classic children’s literature from the respective of reception aesthetics is of positive academic significance.Taking Zhou Xuliang’s version in 1956 and Zhang Chiheng’s version in 2017 as comparative objects,this thesis has firstly probed into translator’s subjectivity from the perspective of horizon of expectations at linguistic level,rhetorical level and cultural level and then from the perspective of concretizing indeterminacies at lexical level,syntactical level and textual level.A contrastive analysis has also been made on the translation methods adopted by Zhou and Zhang with similarities,differences and underlying reasons discussed.It is found that both Zhou and Zhang have fully displayed their translator’s subjectivity in the process of translating The Water Babies,which finds evidence on the following four aspects.Firstly,Zhou and Zhang have shown their subjectivity in deciding on their translation purposes.Zhou was to introduce a book with educational significance to Chinese readers in the 1960 s,while Zhang was to present children in the 21 st century with this classical foreign children’s literature.Secondly,Zhou and Zhang’s subjectivity is shown in choosing different translation strategies.Zhou took domestication as his translation strategy while Zhang adopted foreignization.Thirdly,Zhou and Zhang have given full play to their subjectivity in concretizing the indeterminacies in the source text.By analyzing,judging,inducing and concluding according to their own horizon of expectations as first readers,they concretized the indeterminacies and decided on the information transmitted to readers.But sometimes they failed to decode the indeterminacies properly,and Zhang is found to have made more mistakes in concretizing the indeterminacies during translation.Last but not least,the two translators’ subjectivity is reflected in the whole translation process regarding their translation choices.When translating the same source text,either sound,words,sentences,rhetorical devices or cultural elements,the two translators decided on their translated text with consideration to children’s horizon of expectations.Big differences are found in diction and translation of proper nouns,images,social customs,norms and religion.Traces of different historical background can be easily located in two translators’ diction.Besides,Zhou tends to omit the translation of proper nouns and contents related to religion,while Zhang inclines to leave out images that contain prejudice as well as social customs and norms that may have negative influences on children.Moreover,this thesis has found out that translator’s subjectivity is a unity of initiative and passivity.Apart from children readers’ horizon of expectations,such factors as state policies and publishers’ preference have also imposed restrictions on the subjectivity of Zhou and Zhang in translating The Water Babies.The contrastive analysis on translation methods shows that Zhou has applied translation methods like free translation,literal translation,imitation and variation translation and Zhang has adopted methods like literal translation,free translation,transliteration,word-for-word translation and zero translation in translating The Water Babies.Judging from the translation methods adopted by the two translators,it is concluded that Zhou adopted domestication and Zhang adopted foreignization as their translation strategies,the difference of which may be largely attributed to their different translation purposes.Oriented towards the readers in China,Zhou’s version is easy to understand and receive;however,the readers also have missed the chance to appreciate the language,literature,and culture of a foreign country as well as the chance to shift their horizon of expectations.By contrast,Zhang’s version has largely retained the characteristics of language,literature and culture in the original work,thus making it possible for Chinese readers to enjoy the exoticism between lines and to form new horizon of expectations.It is hoped that this present study could enrich the content of children’s literature translation study,expand the scope of translation studies and provide linguistic data for translators engaged in children’s literature translation.