On The Chinese Versions Of Lin Yutang's Moment In Peking From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

Literary theory often brings enlightenment to translation studies. The author-centered paradigm in literary research endows the author with the centerpiece status in literary experience. And text-centered paradigm views text features as the main object of literary theory study. These two research paradigms overemphasize the position of the author and the text and underplay the role of readers in literary process. Influenced by these two paradigms, the translators, with the aim to produce an authorized version, strived for "equivalence" between source language (SL) text and target language (TL) text. Reception Aesthetics founded in 1960s has shed new light on translation studies. Reception Aesthetics theory believes that literary works are not self-sufficient entities or independent from the readers. It regards literary work, as schematic formations consisting of spots of indeterminacy and blanks which cannot be eliminated. Meaning generates in readers' concretization of the spots of indeterminacy and blanks. Thus Reception Aesthetics affirms the importance of readers as the active participants in meaning generation. More attention to readers'reception marks a new turn in literary theory, namely, reader-centered paradigm.Inspired by the new trend of research, translation studies began to reexamine its traditional approach. Traditional translation theory tends to reduce translators to the faithful servant of the SL text and any slight change of the original is seen as a violation of the "faithfulness" translation principle When applying Reception Aesthetics to translation studies, emphasis will be laid on the following two aspects:first, the translator's subjectivity and initiative during the translation process; second, the translator's consideration of TL readers'horizon of expectations.This thesis applies Reception Aesthetics to literary translation studies and a comparison is made of three Chinese versions of Moment in Peking. Firstly, it elaborates on the horizon of expectations in detail of the three translators as well as the reflection in their translated versions. Zheng Tuo and Ying Yuanjie's version came out in a special historical period. The consideration of the interests of the governors constitutes an important aspect of their horizon of expectations. The translators paid more attention on narrating the plots than on presenting the details. And contents involving Sino-Japan relationship was intentionally deleted. Zhang Zhenyu is a professor in foreign language and translation studies and his version embodies his translation thoughts and principles. His translation is smooth and graceful in language. Besides, he flexibly cut out some content introducing Chinese culture to the western readers. The predominant reason Yu Fei translated Moment in Peking is to pay the literary debt for his father. Therefore, he insisted on "being loyal to the original" which results in the imperfection in the expression effect. However, his intimate knowledge of Chinese traditions enables him to deal with cultural elements successfully. Then a comparative study is made of the Chinese versions from the following two angles, namely, horizon of expectations of the TL text readers and indeterminacy. There are differences between Chinese and western readers in language habits and mode of thinking, etc. The translators have to take the discrepancy into account which is the major factor responsible for the diversity of translated versions. Moreover, as products of the translators'concretization of the indeterminate spots in the SL texts, the TL texts certainly would present different characteristics.