On Target Text Reader's Role In Literary Translation

In recent years,more and more translation theorists and translators agree that the final accomplishment of a translation work is recognized by the target text reader's acceptance of the translated version.Viewed from this angle,the target text reader does play an important role in translation study and practice.The purpose of this thesis is to find out how the target text reader's aesthetic tastes affect the authoring process as well as the interpreting process of the target text,thus attempting to identify the target text reader's role in literary translation.This thesis is a comparative study of three Chinese versions of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens from the perspective of Socio-psycholinguistics.The versions chosen are Lin Shu's《块肉余生述》published in 1908,Dong Qiusi's《大卫·科波菲尔》in 1947 and Zhang Guruo's《大卫·考坡菲》in 1980.The literature review of the history of translation theories shows clearly that the target text reader's role in translation has long been neglected due to the dominant position of the author-centered and text-centered theories in traditional translation theory system both in the West and in China.Literary translation is in essence an activity of aesthetic creation,which should not only convey the basic information of the source text,but also the aesthetic value. The rise of the western Reception Aesthetics provided translation studies with entirely new theoretical perspectives.However,its reader-centered conception that reader decides everything is far from perfect.On the other hand,Chinese scholars' thoughts on reader's reception were mostly scattered remarks without a theoretical elaboration or a systematic study,which are impossible to be applied to literary translation study.In order to fill the gap, this thesis attempts to explore the target text reader's role in literary translation from the perspective of Socio-psycholinguistics,that is,to apply some theories of aesthetic social psychology to literary translation study.The third chapter of the thesis explores the target text reader's influence on authoring and interpreting the target text through a detailed comparison of the three Chinese versions of David Copperfield.Three specific perspectives are chosen to illustrate the target text reader's influence on authoring the target text:the target text reader's linguistic aesthetic tendency, cultural aesthetic tendency and ideological aesthetic tendency.Based on the analysis of respective features of the three versions and the target text readers' aesthetic tastes in different times,the thesis reveals how the readers' aesthetic tastes affect the authoring process of a translated literary work.Moreover,the target text reader's influence on interpreting the target text also explains the reason why the classic literary works need to be retranslated in different times.It is then safe to draw a conclusion that the target text reader does play a dynamic role in the literary translation.The significance of the identification of the target text reader's role in literary translation is also elaborated in the fourth chapter in two main aspects,namely,the significant effects of the study on translator and on readers themselves.In light of the findings,the author points out that the target text reader's role in literary translation deserves far more attention,expecting to contribute a little to the development of translation theory and practice.