Translator's Role Viewed From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

Translation is one of the basic communicative activities of human beings, in the process of which the translator performs an indispensable task. However, due to the marginalized status of translation in traditional translation theories, the translator's role has long been neglected. With the development of translation studies, the role of the translator has drawn more and more attentions. As a theory of literary criticism, reception aesthetics stresses on the dynamic role of the reader and maintains that the text can become meaningful only after being read. Consequently, as the first reader of the source language text, the translator's personal pre-knowledge will undoubtedly affect the translated version.Under the framework of reception aesthetics, this thesis makes a comparative study of the translator's dynamic role in the translation of Jane Eyre. The thesis concludes that the perspective of the translator's role is an effective way in explaining the two versions and can provide translation criticism with new respect.The present study is composed of five chapters. The first two Chapters present a general picture of the current study and a brief literature review of related issues. Then in Chapter Three, the paper makes an overview of studies on the translator's role in the traditional view as well as modern translation theories.Chapter Four consists of the main body of this paper, examining the two Chinese versions of Jane Eyre in light of the translator's role. On the whole, the translator' role is proceeded on three perspectives—the translators' different understandings and interpretations of the characters and theme of Jane Eyre, the linguistic features of the two versions resulted from different translating strategies and the translators' creativity in the phonological level, the lexical level, allusions, the rhetorical level and the stylistic level. Also, some mistranslations and stiff translations in the two versions were pointed out. At last, the issue of the translator's consideration for the readership and the limitations of applying reception theory to translator's roles are discussed. Chapter Five is a summary of the analysis of the translation of Jane Eyre in the framework of aesthetics of reception and the implication for future translation studies. In the end, the present author moves on to analyze the further study of translation and limitations in the present study in the hope of improving it later.