Title Translation Of Literary Works From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

Title translation of literary works is one of the most important parts of literary translation, which is creative and challenging. It has long been valued by scholars and translators in practice, most of whom have made their studies either from a linguistic, contextual or a cultural perspective and focus on comparison and analysis of different techniques and methods and the corresponding effects. However, few scholars have made their studies from the perspective of the reader's participation.Reception aesthetics, a reader-centered theory, was created by Constance School in the 1960s with Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser as main representatives. This theory has a close relationship with hermeneutics and can be seen as a literary criticism. With its totally new perspective, reception aesthetics has exerted great influence on the whole literature field and literary translation field as well.This thesis aims to study title translation of literary works under the guidance of reception aesthetics. It begins with a general introduction of title of literary works and its translation, such as naming methods, features, and functions of title of literary works. Then, the author generalizes several enlightenments of reception aesthetics on literary translation by disserting the main thoughts of reception aesthetics. The translator should take the reader's horizon of expectation, aesthetic experience and receptivity into consideration in translation. Creative criteria for title translation of literary works are proposed on the basis of reception aesthetics next, that is the translated version should retain the cultural information and reproduce the aesthetic information of original title as much as possible so as to make the TL readers acquire the pleasure of aesthetic value and cultural exploration as the SL readers. Finally, the thesis makes a comparative study of title translation of literary works diachronically. Because of the differences in the reader's horizons of expectation, cultural background, aesthetic tastes, reception levels with times, title translation of literary works bears temporal characteristics.In the practice of title translation of literary works, the translator should attach great importance to the reader's horizon of expectations and aesthetic experience; retain cultural information and aesthetic information of title of literary works as much as possible by taking different translation methods so as to make the TL readers acquire the pleasure of aesthetic value and cultural exploration. When we evaluate the title translation of literary works, we have to approach it in its historical and cultural context, find out how the TL readers are involved, and probe into the causes of the translator's choices, so that our studies may be more objective and comprehensive.