The Translator's Role Viewed From The Perspective Of Aesthetic Reception

Translation is one of the basic communicative activities of human beings,during which the translator performs an indispensable task.However,traditional translation studies focused mainly on the analysis of linguistic conversion and put great emphasis on "faithfulness".The translator's role has almost been neglected.With the development of translation studies,the role of the translator has drawn more and more attention.As theory of literary criticism,reception aesthetics stresses on the dynamic role of the translator,who is not only a reader of the original text but also a writer and creator of the target language in the process of translation.Only through the translator's active and creative work,can the translated work be fully completed.This thesis adopts the methodology of reception aesthetics and makes a comparative study of the translator's dynamic role in the translation of Tess of the D'Urbervilles.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 a new perspective.There are five chapters altogether.The first two chapters present a general picture of the current study and a brief literature review of related issues.Then Chapter Three is an overview of studies on the translator's role in traditional discussions as well as modern translation theories.Chapter Four is the main body of this paper,examining the two Chinese versions of Tess of the D'Urbervilles in light of the translator's role.The translator's role is analyzed from three perspectives—the translators different understandings and interpretations of the characters and theme of Tess of the D'Urbervilles.the linguistic features of the two versions as a result of different translating strategies and the translators' creativity in the phonological level,the lexical level and the rhetorical level and allusions.At the end of this chapter,the issue of the translator's consideration for readership and the limitations of applying reception theory to translator's roles are discussed. Chapter Five is the concluding part.Though the translator's rote is constrained by social context,he can still have his own writing style and creativity.