An E-C Translation Report On Hello,Universe Under The Guidance Of Reception Aesthetics

This is a translation practice report based on the children’s novel—Hello,Universe which won the American Newbery Gold Award in 2018.Focusing on children’s real life experience,this novel aims to reflect children’s psychological growth with vivid wording,diverse narrative angles,rich and three-dimensional characters and fascinating plot.As a literary theory,Reception Aesthetics does not directly involve translation strategies and methods,but it creatively shifts the foothold of literary aesthetics from the author to the reader.Hans Robert Jauss,the founder of this theory,believes that the realization of literary works’ value must depend on the reading activities of the readers,who are the active interpreters in the realization of the meaning of literary works instead of the passive recipients.This undoubtedly opens up new horizons and provides new ideas for the translation of children’s literature: due to the particularity of the readers of children’s literature,translators in mission of the English-Chinese translation of children’s literature should pay more attention to reading expectation horizon of Chinese children to improve their reception of the target text on the basis of faithfulness.The practice report is divided into five parts.The first chapter of the report introduces the background and significance of the translation project and describes the translation process;the second chapter is an in-depth analysis of the source text.Due to its literary attributes of the source text,the translator concludes the source text features in three aspects: on language style,on characterization and on emotional appeal.The third chapter introduces the theoretical framework of translation practice—Reception Aesthetics,expounds the two key viewpoints of the theory: expectation horizon and implied readers,then the implied readers of the source text are defined and their horizon of expectation is analyzed from three aspects: the expectation for familiarity,the expectation for vividness and the expectation for childlike interest.The fourth chapter is the main body of the report.The translator intercepts some typical cases from translation practice,elaborates the motivation and function of the translation methods in detail,and discusses how the translation can meet the readers’ horizon of expectation.For the expectation of familiarity on language style,the translator adopts three translation methods: adding reduplicated words,using onomatopoeia and idiomatic expression;as for expectation of vividness on character image,the translator adopts the methods of supplementing modal particles,manifesting contextual information and footnoting person names;for the expectation of childlike interest as an emotion appeal,the use of catchwords,parody and rhymes can enhance the humorous sense in the target text,while the repetition can strengthen readers’ compassion.The fifth chapter summarizes the major findings of this translation practice by pointing out that Reception Aesthetics is of macroscopic guiding value to the translation of children’s literature.Then some experience and suggestions concluded from the practice for children’s literature translation in future is put forward.