A Comparative Study On The English Translation Of Cai Gen Tan From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

Traditional translation theories considered original texts and target readers as isolated and quiet objects,and ignored translators and target readers’ active and creative role in the process of translation,while the appearance of Reception Theory in 1960 s broke the limitations of traditional translation theories.With Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser as its representatives and Phenomenology and Hermeneutics as its theoretical basis,Reception Theory is against the traditional theories that only focus on authors and original texts,and changes the center of literature researches from authors and texts to readers.The literary text is filled with gaps and indeterminacies,inviting readers to participate in the reading activity.Cai Gen Tan is filled with precepts stressing self-cultivation which stem from those three ideological systems,whose philosophy of life still thrives in China today.Readers have different horizons of expectations due to their different experiences,aesthetic ideas,life values,etc.“Cai Gen Tan craze” has attracted much attention in Japan.Although there have been more than ten English translations of Cai Gen Tan since 1926,there are not many studies on its English translations.Based on Reception Aesthetics Theory,this thesis analyzes the different English versions of Cai Gen Tan from horizon of expectations,fusion of expectations and culture concretization with quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis.What’s more,it tries to find out the reason why there are so many different English versions of Cai Gen Tan,and provide some theoretical directions for the translation of Cai Gen Tan.The author discusses the aesthetics of Cai Gen Tan mainly from the reproduction of Phonetic Aesthetics,Rhetoric Aesthetics,and Culture Aesthetics.In order to reproduce poetic quality of Cai Gen Tan better,the translator has to consider the target reader’s horizon of expectations,moderately fill gaps and try to arrive at the fusion of the translator’s horizon of expectations and the original text and the fusion of the translator’s and the target reader’s horizon of expectations.