On Lin Shu's Translation Of Uncle Tom's Cabin In The Light Of Readers' Horizon Of Expectations

Among traditional translation theories, both the author-oriented theory and the source text-oriented theory occupied a definitely dominant position. Most of them did not taken the readers' reception into consideration and consider what translation strategies we should adopt depends on the readers' reception in the translating process. Until the 1960s, with the birth of reception theory, based on phenomenology and philosophical hermeneutics and aimed at readers' reception practice, a new research method has been established:to judge a translated text from the reception of readers. Jauss's readers' horizon of expectations provides a proper perspective to explain reader-oriented translated texts.Lin Shu is a famous translator. Lin Shu's translation has become a unique phenomenon in the history of Chinese translation, which remains a controversial and heated issue in the translation circle. As for it, there are positive and negative comments. But it is generally believed that Lin Shu's translation is unfaithful. Hei Nu Yu Tian Lu is among them. For its unique social purpose, Hei Nu Yu Tian Lu is not to show its literary value. It has been criticized by some famous translation critics for Lin Shu's intentional adaptations and special translation methods. However, after its publication, it was well accepted and enjoyed great popularity.Since Lin Shu's translation was unfaithful to the original Uncle Tom's Cabin, why it could produce so great impacts? This thesis tries to employ Jauss's readers' horizon of expectations to explain this phenomenon. Jauss's horizon of expectations emphasizes the central position of readers and reveals that translators should take readers' horizon of expectations into consideration in order to achieve readers' acceptability of their translations which can contribute to the realization of translation purpose. The author will analyze the special translation methods including the employment of classical Chinese, supplement, omission, alteration and so on from readers' given horizon of life expectations and horizon of literary expectations in the given social and historical environment at his time to give the reason why the translated text was widely accepted, thereby justifying the rationality and feasibility of his translation.