The Enlightenment Of Aesthetics Of Reception On Literary Translation

As we all know, the development of hermeneutics enlarges the scopes of literary translation study. In late 1960s, aesthetics of reception, which has an intrinsic correlation with hermeneutics on one side, and with literary translation on the other, soon swept across the whole European and American literature circle. The theory with fresh viewpoints exerts a unique influence upon literature as well as literary translation circle. H.R. Jauss and W. Iser are two leading scholars in the aesthetics of reception. They speak favorably for the importance of the role of reader's participation in reading and the openness of text. They regard the reader's participation as an inner driving force and an underlying factor of literary text's evolution in meaning.So far, there is a large amount of translating practice and a great number of translation theory probe the concerning aesthetics of reception both at home and abroad. Admittedly, research on this subject started fairly late in Chinese translation circle. It does not achieve so much as the western counterpart does. Moreover, some researches are conducted unsystematically and unilaterally, which leads to different kinds of misunderstandings and suspicions. Since the aesthetics of reception sways the foundation of the traditional translation theory, its introduction and application to translation field meet a great resistance. Aiming at the status quo, this paper makes a careful examination and thorough study on the conceptions and points of aesthetics of reception and concludes the achievements got in practice.In order to endow the readers with a concrete knowledge of this theory and its status in translation circle, this paper first offers a clear introduction of aesthetics of reception and its moving track in Chinese translation field. To assist further discussion, the second part of this paper expounds how to introduce a theory and how to treat the problems existing in the process. Only with these issues settled could this paper further prove the rationality of introduction and application of aesthetics of reception to literary translation. The third part is the most important of the wholethesis. Since most of the current researches are unsystematic and partial ones, this paper expounds systematically the enlightenments of aesthetics of reception on different categories in literary translation. And it raises and solves the problems ignored by most researchers (i.e. how to treat the degree of the translator's freedom since text is open? How to treat the different interpretations made by different translators?). In addition, this part further proves the practicability and applicability of aesthetics of reception by solving the problems and settling the controversies in translation practice by use of relevant theories and points in aesthetics of reception. The third part tries to, both from the theoretical and practical perspectives, prove the necessity of introduction of aesthetics of reception to literary translation circle. In the forth part, this paper mentions all the translation theories that share the basic common points or spirits with aesthetics of reception. The result of the discussion and expounding of this part shows us that an innovation is progressing in translation field, which challenges the traditional theories. The irresistible tendency embodies a great chance to establish the translatological aesthetics of reception. The whole thesis will focus on the following three points: (1) Text is open; (2) Literary translation is a process combining different subjects' horizon of expectations; (3) Both translator's and TL reader's reception ability affects the development of literary translation greatly.