Subjective Role Of The Reader And Its Influence On The Translator's Activity

The reader is undoubtedly one of the most active factors in translation activity. For a long time, researchers and scholars have paid different attention to the key elements in the translation activity—the author, the text and the translator. In the 1960s to 1970s, with the rise of descriptive translation, there was a tendency in translation study that faces the culture of target language. Proper and increasing attention has been paid to the subjectivity of the translator, which challenges the "author-oriented" or "text-oriented" paradigm. With the rise of reception aesthetics which originated in Germany in 1960s, the role and status of the reader has been improved to a great extent. But many essays in China only discussed and emphasized the aesthetic creation of the translator. Many scholars and researchers just briefly mentioned the central place of the reader in the introduction of the basic theory of reception aesthetics. There is less deep and profound research on the subjective role of the version's reader and its influence and revelation on the translation study.This paper first discusses the changes of paradigms. Then it introduces the evolution of reception theory and its major representatives and their major points. Next it applies some important terms in reception aesthetics to translation study and explains two important terms in reception aesthetics—"concretization" and "horizon of expectation" and discusses their significance toward translation study. Moreover, this paper tries to analyze the embodiment of the subjective role of the reader and ways of function. Contemporary reception theory holds that there is no absolute interpretation of the meaning of a text. The reader interprets the meaning of a text through the process of concretization and plays a subjective role in such a process. And in translating a text, a translator's pre-understanding and the fusion of horizons between the translator and text plays decisive role. But the translator cannot overemphasize his role. Instead, his scope of creativity is limited, depending on the source text. The target text reader's capability of reception should be trusted.