A Study On The Aesthetic Represetation In The English Version Of Fortress Besieged From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics And Skopostheorie

Literary translation is not just transference between two different languages, but should achieve on a higher level:to achieve the aesthetic representation of the original work. Reception Aesthetics, as a kind of literary criticism theory, offers a totally new angle to translation studies for this paper. This theory focuses on the readers'reception, emphasizes the close relationship between the reader and the text, and concerns the important role the reader play in the meaning construction of the text. Different readers have formed different horizon of expectations due to different language systems and cultural background, which needs the translator to try to make his horizon fuse with the target language readers to provide them aesthetic appreciation at a maximal level in the process of translation. Having appeared in the late 1970s, skopostheorie is greatly influenced by Reception Aesthetics and also stresses the readers'reception. This theory can also help us understand the devices of the aesthetic representation of the translated version of Fortress Besieged.The novel Fortress Besieged written by Qian ZhongShu is an excellent work, its translated work cooperated by Jeanne Kelly and Mr.Nathan K.Mao also has a great influence on the readers. In this paper, the double perspectives (mainly the perspective of Reception Aesthetics, and subsidiary the skopostheorie) are used to study some examples which are extracted from the translated version of Fortress Besieged to analyze the devices of the aesthetic representation from linguistic and cultural aspects. In the part of aesthetic representation of language, lexical, syntactic and rhetorical levels are discussed. In the part of aesthetic representation of culture, the aesthetic representation of idioms, dialects and cultural taboos are discussed. Through the detailed analysis of aesthetic representation of these examples, this paper comes to a conclusion that in the process of aesthetic representation of language, to correctly represent the original aesthetic information for the target readers, the translators take the target readers' receptive capacity and their active role into account to try to make their horizon fuse with the original author of the original text in order to produce a relatively satisfactory translated version, meanwhile, they must choose the proper words, build correct syntactic structures and adopt the similar or same rhetorical devices to represent the original meanings so as to make the target readers get the same response as the readers of the original. In the process of aesthetic representation of culture, to show the aesthetic appreciation for the target readers, the translators constantly bear the different language systems and cultural background that exist between China and many Western countries in mind to adopt reader-oriented translation approaches to stir up the target readers' aesthetic experience. For the idioms, dialects and cultural taboos appeared in this paper, the translators adopt proper impressions which can be available for the target readers by analyzing the real original meanings implied in the text to meet the target readers'horizon of expectations.