Reader Awareness In Lin Yutang's Translation

Lin Yutang is both a great man of letters and a great translator who introduced to the world a huge amount of Chinese literary and cultural classics. His informal but polished style in both Chinese and English made him one of the most influential writers of his generation, and his compilations and translations of classical Chinese texts into English were bestsellers in the West. In addition to many translations, Lin Yutang also wrote a ten-thousand-word essay on translation theory, illustrating his views on translation from different perspectives. To the translation studies in the 1930s and 1940s when the essay was published, Lin Yutang's theory about incorporating linguistics and psychology into translation studies held a significant position for its originality. Even today, Lin Yutang is still a rich source of study and research in the translation field.The author of this paper tries to study Lin Yutang's reader awareness as shown in his translation from the perspective of reception theory, taking Harvest Moon on West Lake (《西湖七月半》) as the text. Employing three major concepts of reception theory, "Horizon of Expectations", "Aesthetic Distance" and "Text Indeterminacies" to analyze Lin Yutang's English version, the paper seeks to show that his reader awareness is embodied in his selection of source material as well as choice of translation strategies.The thesis starts with a summary of previous studies on Lin Yutang. Then it introduces Lin Yutang's translation theory and practice, providing a necessary basis and reference for Although Lin Yutang mainly devotes his life to writing and translating, he also elaborates on the translation criteria of faithfulness from the perspective of linguistics and explains the significance of asthetics in translation. Besides, he also puts forward that psychology of the readers should be taken into account in translation. Then in Part Three Reception Theory is introduced to throw light on translation studies, preparing for the analysis of reader awareness in the following parts. Reception Theory focuses on the significance of the reader and shows a strong sense of reader awareness. So an analysis of reader awareness from the perspective of reception theory is both reasonable and necessary. The fourth chapter discusses Lin Yutang's reader awareness as embodied in his English translation of Harvest Moon on West Lake. By analyzing the way Lin Yutang meets the horizon of expectations of the Western readers, the way he adjusts aesthetic distance accordingly in his selection of source language texts as well as translation strategies and the way he fills in the text indeterminacies, this part reveals Lin Yutang's strong reader awareness in translation. Part Five elaborates on the significance of the chosen text among Lin's works.Finally, the thesis argues that the successful reception of Lin Yutang's English translation of Chinese classics by Western readers suggests that reader awareness is an indispensable part of translation, directly influencing the fulfillment of translators' puroposes. So reader awareness plays an important role in translation theory and practice.