On The Necessity And Significance Of Literary Retranslation From The Perspective Of Reception Theory

In recent years, there are more and more retranslated versions of literary works; accordingly, there is a heated discussion, in which there are different opinions and ideas. The author believes that there must be some necessity and significance behind the practice of literary retranslation, and the paper aims to prove it from the perspective of reception theory.This paper mainly employs two major terms of reception theory, namely indeterminacy and blank of literary text and horizon of expectations, to discuss the necessity and significance of literary retranslation. On the one hand, literary text is full of indeterminacy and blank in discourse, image and significance, which results in no fixed interpretation of the text and leaves much space for retranslation, explaining the reason why translators are motivated to retranslate certain masterpieces again and again; on the other hand, historicity and subjectivity of horizon of expectations determine that translators in different periods with different backgrounds are likely to produce different interpretations of the same literary work, readers in different periods with different aesthetic expectations will also raise different requirements for translated works. In addition, the author compares several translated versions in order to prove what the paper has discussed in the part is reliable and valid.Through the discussion, the paper draws a conclusion that retranslation of literary works is not only possible but also necessary. Apart from the discussion of the necessity and significance of literary retranslation, the paper also introduces three retranslation strategies: corrective retranslation, reconstructive retranslation and adapting retranslation, in order to make an overall study of literary retranslation.