On Translation Of Kinship Terms From The Perspective Of The Reception Aesthetics

Being parts of address terms, kinship terms deserve a decisive place in the people's daily communication. Because of the different cultural influences, there have been great differences between the Chinese and the English kinship addressing systems. Therefore, to properly translate Chinese kinship terms into English kinship terms is crucial to the cross-cultural communication.In this thesis, the influence of Chinese culture-cultural orientation, social structure and axiology on Chinese kinship addressing forms and that of western culture on English kinship addressing forms are first analyzed. On the basis of this analysis, the main differences between these two systems are examined from four aspects-quantity, meaning, function and rang of use, which bring lots of obstacles to the translation kinship terms. Then, under the guidance of reception aesthetics, this thesis makes a relatively systematic study and exploration of kinship term translation, through a case study of A Dream of Red Mansions.This study tries to free the translation from the bondage of text-oriented traditional translation theories, and provides a reader-oriented viewing angle for the kinship term translation. First, translation is a kind of dialogue among the text, the translator and the target readers. The emphasis of translating should be placed on the readers'reception effects. Second, the readers'attitude towards kinship term translation will not remain unchanged all the time. With a better understanding of translations, readers'horizon of expectation will keep changing, and then translations have to keep changing. Therefore, it is necessary to re-study on the kinship term translation, in order to meet the readers'horizon of expectation.The author holds that translation of kinship terms should be reader-centered-culturally adapted and pragmatically appropriate. An appropriate strategy-flexible and proper strategy as the final resolution of translating kinship terms is suggested in this thesis.