An Analysis Of The Translation Of Chinese Culturally Loaded Words In Fortress Besieged

The paper aims to analyze the relation among translated version of Fortress Besieged,Fortress Besieged and readers’ horizon of expectation, text’s indeterminacy and theimplied reader. From the viewpoint of aesthetics of reception, the author tries to offer somesuggestions on the translation of culturally loaded words.In many translation theories of the past, author-centered and text-centered theorieshave dominated the translation theory circle, without considering that in the process oftranslation, translators adopt different strategies according to readers’ reception. In1960s,Jauss and Iser proposed aesthetics of reception theory, with phenomenology andhermeneutics as the theoretical bases. This has brought about a revolution in literary criticsfield, and finally converted the focus of literary critics from literary works and authors toreaders. The application of aesthetics of reception theory in translation studies has attractedresearchers’ attention to translators and the reception process of target readers.The article expounds the translation of culturally loaded words in Fortress Besiegedfrom the angle of aesthetics of reception theory. Since this theory put much emphasis oncultural aspect and readers’ role, and Fortress Besieged is also a novel of traditionalChinese flavor, therefore the author deems that the theory is effective in analyzing thetranslation of the book. For this reason the enlightenment of the theory on translationactivity is clarified. Translators’ strategies are studied with relation to the similarities anddifferences between the source culture and target culture. Meanwhile, the translationphenomenon in rendering Fortress Besieged is analyzed with the assistance of the threemain points of aesthetics of reception theory, i.e., readers’ fusion of horizon, theindeterminacy of the text and the implied reader. From these points, the conclusion can be reached that the translators of Fortress Besieged place cultural communication at a verysignificant position, and they adopt flexible translation methods. With the similaritybetween source language culture and target language culture differing, the strategies aremade accordingly in order to cater to readers’ directional expectation and creativeexpectation. Besides, in line with the needs of different cultural transplantation cases, thetranslators have adopted corresponding translation methods so as to accord with readers’reception capability. Though not all of their management in translation of culturally loadedwords is satisfying, their treatment of cultural differences and consideration of readers’reception capability shows that Fortress Besieged may yet be regarded as a classic opus.