A Study Of The English Translation Of Feng Sheng (The Message) From The Perspective Of Horizon Of Expectation

Feng Sheng is the masterpiece of Mai Jia,winner of the 7th Mao Dun Literature Award,and has been regarded as the last work of Mai Jia’s espionage trilogy.It won the People’s Literature Novel Award and has been adapted into film and television works several times.In 2020,its English version—The Message,following Decoded and In the Dark,all translated by sinologists Olivia Milburn and Christopher Payne,was published by the best independent publishing house in the UK,Head of Zeus.Laura Palmer,director of publication,called it "a novel with cosmopolitan elements",and believed that the publication of The Message will be another opportunity for the Chinese novel to expand its global influence.By collecting its sales ranking,overseas collections,media comments,book reviews,and reader feedback,this thesis explores the overall translation and reception of this novel.It turns out that The Message has been widely accepted by the West largely because it meets the reading expectations of target language readers.In view of this,this study primarily presents an effort to probe into the following questions:1.What is the target reader’s horizon of expectation to The Message?2.What translation strategy and translation methods have been adopted by the two translators in consideration of the target reader’s horizon of expectation?How do these approaches enable the translation to better meet the expectations of target readers?This thesis finds that the target reader’s horizon of expectations are influenced by multiple factors from four aspects—mainstream poetics and literary tradition;value orientation and national character;recipient context and cultural environment;translation agents,media and paratexts.By comparing Feng Sheng and The Message from aspects of language,content,and text structure,it finds that to satisfy the target reader’s horizon of expectations,the translators generally employ domestication strategy,but preserve the original narrative features,effectively dealing with the aesthetic reproduction of the source text as well as the acceptability of the target text.On the one hand,to meet the target reader’s directed expectations,the translators adopt paragraphing,restructuring,addition,idiomatic translation,free translation,deletion,and adaptation;on the other hand,to fulfill the target reader’s creative expectations,the translators adopt amplification,explanatory translation,alliteration,defamiliarization,and literal translation.Within the scope acceptable to the target readers,the translation is expected to increase readability and innovation,so that readers can"understand" and "get something out of it",thus making the work more widely accepted and appreciated.The successful experience of the translation of Feng Sheng has significant implications for the translation of contemporary Chinese literature.From the perspective of the target reader’s horizon of expectation,translators should choose different translation approaches based on the primary principle of the acceptability of the translation,taking into account the creative expectations of the target readers while fully taking care of their directed expectations.Regardless of whether the source text matches the reading expectations of the recipients of the translated version,as long as the horizon of expectation of the target language readers is correctly grasped and the linguistic and cultural heterogeneity of the source text is appropriately preserved,a new reading experience and aesthetic appreciation can be created for the target readers on the basis of the natural fluency and understandability of the translated text,thus promoting the acceptance and dissemination of the translation in the target language world.