Translation Of Culture-Loaded Expressions In Lin Yutang's Six Chapters Of A Floating Life: A Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

Reception aesthetics, as a kind of new paradigm and methodology in literary study, is mainly a literary theory, in a strict sense, a literary criticism theory. It can be thought as a part of hermeneutics, or as the latest development of both hermeneutics and phenomenology. It was developed by some scholars at the University of Constance in Germany during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser are the most important representatives.The center of literary study has been transferred from the texts to the readers. Reception aesthetics not only focuses on the understanding of the text, but also studies the role of the readers in the literary acceptance. Literary translation is also a kind of literary activity in which the translator firstly is a reader, recipient and then a translator. The author should consider his readers' social experience, aesthetic tendency and receptivity, namely readers' "horizon of expectations" when he/she is in the process of literary creation. It is the same with translation activity: Readers are both the starting and the ending point.Six Chapters of A Floating Life, a well acclaimed book, written by Shen Fu (沈复) in the Qing Dynasty in the Eighteenth century, is the author's autobiography. It is a complex tale of romance, travel, hobbies, mishaps and family obligation. The prospective function of translating Shen Fu's "Six Chapters of A Floating Life" is to introduce and transmit Chinese rich cultural deposits and realize the goal of intercultural communication. It contains a whole range of words and expressions concerning Chinese classical cultures and customs. Most target language readers have no impressions of these customs in their memories and they don't even have these experiences in their daily life. Lin Yutang (Mr. Lin) loved this book very much and spared no pains polishing it for more than ten times before its final publication in 1935. Among his translated works, Six Chapters of A Floating Life is regarded as the most outstanding one.In this thesis the author discusses the intimate relationship between reception aesthetics and translation; it can be used to guide the translation of culture-loaded expressions in practice. Then the author analyzes translation of Chinese culture-loaded expressions in Mr. Lin's Six Chapters of A Floating Life from the perspective of reader's role and status, horizon of expectations and fusion of horizons. Although there are some regrets in his translation, Mr. Lin translates the culture-loaded expressions successfully. He estimates readers' cultural receptivity objectively and takes flexible translation methods such as foreignization and domestication to retain the source language cultural information, cultural flavor and make the text readable.Translation should give consideration to the readers' understanding, integrity and freshness of the source text, and arouse the readers' re-creation. Translators shouldn't restrict themselves to some words in pursuit of literal or free translation of a certain goal, which could cause fossilization of thoughts and influence the style and effect of the whole translation.In the process of globalization and fusion of cultures, reception aesthetics finds new entrance and solutions for translation studies. Translators should attach more importance to the target language readers' role as recipients in translating culture-loaded expressions. They should also pay special attention to the cultural differences and target language readers' reception levels in cultural introduction and transmission.Translators are required to deal with cultural differences and conflicts flexibly according to the concrete contexts. We should be aware of the role of translation in cultural construction and translation should be treated in a more tolerant and open mind-set.