On The Translation Of Lolita From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

Lolita, written by Vladimir Nabokov, is first published in France in 1955. The book is regarded as one of the finest novels written in the 20th century and this masterpiece has been translated into many languages ever since it has been published. In China, since the publication of its first Chinese version in Taiwan Province in 1964, Lolita has been successively translated and published, and there are more than twenty Chinese versions of Lolita up to now. However, studies concerning the comparison of its different versions are far from sufficient. In this thesis, the author intends to explore the Chinese translation of Lolita from the perspective of Reception Aesthetics.As a new and influential paradigm and methodology in literary theories, Reception Aesthetics or Reception Theory marks a shift in concern from the author and the text to the text-reader relationship in literary criticism. It deems that the reader's reaction of the works is a criterion for determining the quality and value of a work of arts. In the process of creating a literary text, the author should consider the "horizon of expectations" of the reader. In addition, there are many spots of indeterminacies and blanks exist in a literary text, which construct the communication between the works and the reader. These indeterminacies need the reader to concretize according to their comprehensions. Thus, the reader acts an active role in the realization of a works, and through the reader's participation, a literary works could be finally completed.In this thesis, the author chooses three Chinese versions of Lolita and analyzes samples extracted from these versions based on two important concepts of "horizon of expectations" and "indeterminacy" in Reception Aesthetics.Instead of evaluating the gains and losses in the three versions, the thesis intends to probe the causes for multiple translations existing in China. It concludes that Lolita, like many other masterpieces, can not be fully excavated by a single translation. Furthermore, one version of Lolita can not satisfy the need of every reader in every period.