A Tentative Study Of Translators' Consideration For Target Readership

Translation is an activity involving original author, source text (ST), translator, target text (TT), and target readership. Actually, as an action, translation has its own purpose, for it must be directed at its target readership -- the object that a translated product serves. A translated product will not exist until it is recognized by its readership. It requires translators to consider the target readers and their need for reading in the process of translation and then produce the corresponding TT accordingly rather than following the track of the original author step by step. It is out of the perspective of translators' consideration for target readership that the author of this thesis aims to explore the phenomena and the characteristics of translators' consideration for target readers as well as the ways of considering readers in the history of translation by borrowing the relevant theory of reception aesthetics. The thesis is organized in six parts.Introduction overviews the previous perspectives of translation study in translating circle, summarizing two schools: one is from the angle of the relationship between the ST and the TT, for example, the views which stress on faithfulness, equivalence, spirit or form resemblance and sublimation; the other is from translators' cultural attitude such as the heated polemic on foreignization and domestication. It points out that few translation studies are concerned with the factor of receptor, especially translators' consideration for target readership during the translating process. In fact, these viewpoints are just one-sided and they have their own prejudice, for they neglect the factor of receptor --the crucial part in translating.Chapter One, the Factors That Influence The Reception of a Text, begins with exploring the receiving environment -- the target cultural system, then touches upon the subjective receptor--the target readership by borrowing the theory of Reception Aesthetics and analyzes the significance and inspiration of reception aesthetics to the study of translation at last.