A Study Of The Two Chinese Versions Of Gulliver’s Travels From The Perspective Of The Horizon Of Expectation

Gulliver’s Travels, the representative work of Swift, was introduced into China as a translated work as early as the late Qing dynasty. Since then, this novel has been retranslated again and again. It can be seen that there are two trends in the translation of this novel. Some translators tended to render it into a politically satirical novel for adult readers while some translators preferred to translate into a reading material for children. In view of this, the author of this thesis selects two Chinese versions of Gulliver’s Travels and analyzes them from the perspective of the horizon of expectation. The two Chinese versions chosen are Zhang Jian’s version which is popular among adult readers and Wang Weidong’s version which is children’s favorite.The horizon of expectation is a crucial concept of reception theory. According to reception theory, the author should take readers’ horizon of expectation into full account in the process of writing for the reason that a literary work that can’t be understood and accepted by readers has no life and readers’ horizon of expectation determines their attitudes and assessment towards a literary work. These viewpoints provided a new angle for translation studies. Translation theorists put forward that target readers’horizon of expectation determines the reception of the target text and the target text will be of no value if it can’t be accepted by target readers. Therefore, in order to assure the acceptability of the target text, the translator should show full consideration for his target readers’horizon of expectation.The characteristics of adult readers’ and children’s horizon of expectation are different. The author explores the characteristics of their horizon of expectation respectively and analyzes Zhang Jian’s and Wang Weidong’s versions, aiming to study the efforts these two translators made in translation to make their versions satisfy their target readers’horizon of expectation. On the whole, both translators adopted proper translation strategies to cater for their target readers’horizon of expectation.Needless to say, the thesis has its defects that require improvement by experts and scholars.