On Indeterminacy Of Literary Translation From The Perspective Of Reception Theory

Reception theory, as a literary criticism, is a theory characterized byreader-orientation. Jauss and Iser are the two famous theorists in this field. Based onGadamer's concept of "horizon", Jauss puts forward the term "horizon ofexpectations" to discuss how literature is perceived by the interpreters in differentperiods ranging from the past to the present. Based on Ingarden's "schematizedviews", Iser raises the concept "appealing structure" of literary text, which iscomposed of gaps and points of indeterminacy.Reception theory provides a new perspective for translation study. It is viewed inReception theory that there are gaps and indeterminacy in literary text, whosemeaning results from communication between the text and readers rather than the textitself. With creative employment of literary language, literary work presents anaesthetic world full of fuzziness, vacancy and implicitness to attract readers toparticipate in the construction of textual meaning based on horizon of expectations.Each individual reader will make his own decision on how to fill in the gaps andindeterminacies based on personal horizon of expectations. Thus, there will bepotentially different meaning realizations for the same text explored by differentreaders.The dissertation deals with the indeterminacy of literary translation from theperspective of Reception theory by making a comparative study of two Englishversions of Moonlight over the Lotus Pond. Appealing structure is embodied in fivelayers: phonetic formations, semantic construction, syntactic construction, image andpsychological factors in literary text, so the study is carried out from the five aspects.Through deep research, it is found that enlightened by Reception theory, literarytranslation can be considered as the result of the interaction between translator'shorizon of expectations with textual appealing structure, which is indeterminate, for each translator performs the interaction in their respective ways. Because it is reader'sactive reception that revitalizes the literary work in terms of Reception theory,translator should leave adequate room for TL reader's imagination and participation.So it is proposed in the study that translator is expected to recreate the appealingstructure from the five aspects to satisfy TL readers' aesthetic demand. Moreover,some implications are inferred from the study. It is concluded that there areuntranstability, creative treason and cultural competition in literary translation.Literary translation, in a real sense, is an art of creative aesthetic representation,the result of which is indeterminate. What literary translators should do is to recreatethe original appealing structure in TT with creativity to stimulate the correspondingaesthetic response on TL readers as was stimulated on SL readers.