On The Status Of Target Language Reader From The Perspective Of Language Philosophy

In the 20th century, the Western philosophy takes the significant"linguistic turn" from epistemology of subjective philosophy to linguisticinterpretive philosophy. This is, in essence, a change of man's cognitiveparadigm, and it immediately brings about a tremendous impact on thetraditional concept of translation. As, in the light of philosophy, theconcept of translation changes from the dualism to pluralism, the targetlanguage reader as one factor in the pluralistic relationship obtains moreattention of translation studies.In the eighties of last century, the western translation theories,represented by Nida's dynamic equivalence, find their way into China andbring about a tremendous impact on the traditional concept of translationin China. The traditional dualism, viz the source language text versus thetarget language text, has switched to the pluralism of translation studies.The target language reader, the previously neglected factor in the processof translation, attracts scholars' attention and becomes the new issue oftranslation studies-the reader-centered theory.This thesis first probes into the introduction and comments ofapplications of the western linguistic philosophy theories in translation,mainly covering the Philosophical Hermeneutics, the Deconstruction ofTranslation, the Dynamic Equivalence Theories, A Correlative Approachto Translation and Reception Aesthetics. And on the basis of the synthesisof the essence of different theories, the writer discusses the status andinfluence of target language (TL) readers in translation activities. The paper points out that the TL readers have both active and positiveinfluences on translation activities. Thus, it is necessary to make scientificanalysis on the influential factors of TL readers, so as to improve thestudies of translation theories and practice. Furthermore, the writerpresents his own opinion that the influence of TL readers on translation ischaracterized by relativity, dynamics, openness and temporality, in hopeof broadening the horizon of translation study and improving thetranslation practice.