The Translation Of Cultural Elements In Strange Tales From Make-do Studio From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

With the frequent exchange and communication between countries, translation, as an important means of cultural exchange and transmission, has served a more significant role. The cultural differences between different countries become a tough issue for translation. As to how to deal with the cultural elements, it has become a hot topic and draws more attention in the translation studies and translation practice. Under the influence of the source text-oriented theory, the principles and the related methods to deal with the cultural difference can not break away from the bondage of author-centered and text-centered theory. The translator and the readers are considered as passive receptors.As a new paradigm and methodology in literary theories, reception aesthetics marks a shift from the author-centered and work-centered to the reader-centered. As reception aesthetics and translation studies are intrinsically related, its appearance provides a new idea and new thought to the translation studies. This thesis illustrates the formation and some important concepts of the theory and then focuses the attention on the relationship between the theory and translation studies and also the guidance of reception aesthetics in the translation of cultural elements. According to reception aesthetics, the reader has already had a world view, social experience and aesthetic tendency and his mind is not empty in his reading of a literary work which constitute his horizon of expectations, the two aspects of which are the oriented horizon and the creative horizon. The former one proves the merits of domestication while the latter testifies the merits of foreignization. Over domestication or over foreignizaiton will not exert an appropriate impact on the target readers.In the last part, the author applies the main concepts of this theory: readers' active role and status, the fusion of horizon of expectations between the reader's and the translated version, to analyze the translation of cultural elements in the translated version of Strange Tales from Make-do Studio translated by Denis C. and Victor H. Mair and draws the conclusion that the translation of culture elements in the work is successful on the whole.Meanwhile, the author also points out that as translation is the bridge for intercultural communication, its purpose is to realize intercultural communication. Since only when the translated version is accepted by the target readers can communication come true, in dealing with the cultural elements, the translator should give full consideration to the target readers' cultural background and cultural requirement in order to achieve cultural exchange.