A Comparative Translational Study Of The Culture-Loaded Words In The Poems Of Xiyouji-from The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

Reception Aesthetics and Philosophical Hermeneutics can be traced to the same origin. Hermeneutics is concerned mainly with interpretation, meaning, the relationship between target readers and the text and so on. Reception Aesthetics, as a significant literature theory school, is also based on the target readers’acceptability. Thus, the incorporation of these two theories not only provides new room and thinking for literary translation, but also exerts great significance towards both translation theory and practice. According to Reception Aesthetics, translators should take the target readers’role and status especially target readers’horizon into adequate consideration when they treat cultural elements in literary works. In order to achieve this aim, translators should adopt proper translation methods during the translating process.Based on Philosophical Hermeneutics, the thesis first expounds the trajectory of Reception Aesthetics itself; then, after a systemic demonstration and analysis, Reception Aesthetics has been proved to be a powerful tool to make a comprehensive analysis about translation. Under the guidance of Reception Aesthetics, a theory-based statistics has been designed to analyze the translation of culture-loaded words in the poems of Xiyouji, both in Anthony C. Yu and William John Francis Jenner’s translation versions, in a comprehensive and theory-based way. The analysis discloses that there are certain relevancies between readers" receptivity and the translators’choices of translation methods.By contrast research, the author discovers that there are certain rules to be observed when the culture-loaded words are translated:for ecological culture-loaded words and material culture-loaded words, the translators should analyze the horizon scope of these culture-loaded words. Then, they can choose appropriate translation methods to translation them:if they are zero horizon, the literal translation and transliteration methods will be employed; if they are partial horizon or full horizon, the best way to translate them is replacement translation method; because of the differences between different social cultures, the majority of social culture-loaded words belong to zero horizon or partial horizon. When translating this kind of words, the best choice is to select literal or liberal translation method; the recommendable translation method for religious culture-loaded words is literal translation and replacement translation; for linguistic culture-loaded words, the optimal translation method is literal translation or literal plus annotation translation. Based on the general analysis and summary of the translation methods for these five categories of culture-loaded words, the thesis also discovers some mistranslations in both Yu and Jenner’s translation versions and proposes suggestive translations for reference.