Post-editing Of Juvenile Detective Fiction As Guided By The Reception Aesthetics Theory

This report is based on the translation practice of the 16^th（The Clue of the Tapping Heels）and the 17^th（The Mystery of the Brass-Bound Trunk）volumes of the Nancy Drew Series,a juvenile detective series that was published by the Stratemeyer Syndicate Company and has been a bestseller in the USA and beyond since 1930.It has been evidenced that reading juvenile detectives benefit teenagers in multiple terms,such as enjoying the pleasure of exploration and discovery,receiving subconscious training in thinking,accelerating emotional and spiritual empathy,and improving morality.Translating excellent juvenile detectives such as the Nancy Drew Series,and introducing them to the domestic market,hence,are of great significance and value.The source text is characteristic of simple words,short sentences,compacted and gripping plots.Given that both the main characters and target readers are teenagers,the author argues that the translation should conform to teenagers’reading and wording habits,and catch their interests.The Reception Aesthetics Theory,which emphasizes the readers’dominant position and their initiatives in reading and interpreting,was therefore adopted to guide the translation and the post-editing.This report has focused on the Reception Aesthetics Theory-informed post-editing of the machine-translated text from three perspectives:lexicon,syntax and discourse.Post-editing strategies and methods,which are aimed at making up for the seven types of limitations of machine translation and make the target texts more conform to readers’expectations and their wording habits,were derived therefrom.These strategies include using colloquial words,restructuring sentences and supplementing related cultural information and so on.This translation report is composed of five chapters:Chapter 1,the introduction,provides a general description of the background and significance of this task;Chapter 2 is a detailed description of the translation process:pre-translation,while-translation and post-translation;The third chapter thoroughly describes the Reception Aesthetics Theory and its applicability and feasibility to this task.In the fourth chapter,the author illustrated via specific cases how to modify inaccurate and rigid wording so as to achieve a better reading effect;The last part concluded with the derived post-editing strategies and methods for later references,which is followed by the gains and the limitations of this report.