Fictional Translation Viewed With Reception Aesthetics

Although being mature recently, the fiction has quite a long history. Boasting theunique form, it is widely used and appreciated. Nowdays people pay much more attentionto the research on fictional translation from various aspects; however it is far from enough.Reception Aesthetics, which arose in the1960s, provides a new standing point for thefictional translation and literary criticism.Under the great influence of Hermeneutics and Phenomenology, Hans Robert Jaussand Wolfgang Iser who are the main representatives of Constance school in federalistGermany put forward Reception Aesthetics around the middle1960s. The theory holds thatbefore the reading process every reader has certain horizon of expectations towards thetext. Any literature text is full of indeterminacies and vacancies. The reading process is infact the course of fusion between the horizon of expectations and the text, it is also thecourse that the readers fill in the blanks and concretize the uncertainties. Only by doing socan a real intact literary work be produced. Consequently the focus of the literary researchis shifted from “SL-text centered” and “author-centered” to the readers and the readingactivities, which is absolutely the milestone in the long river of the aesthetic development.This thesis first describes the definition and research history of the fictionaltranslation, secondly it gives an introduction of Reception Aesthetics, including its origin,development and main concepts, then it centers on the literary achievement that EileenChang has got and the reason why the author chooses the English version of The GoldenCangue, which in all lay the foundation for the latter part of the thesis. In the main bodypart, the concepts “horizon of expectations” and “indeterminacy of text and vacancy ofmeaning” are applied to analyze the English version of The Golden Cangue from thecultural and linguistic aspects. The last part is the conclusion which mainly focuses on theguidance of Reception Aesthetics on the fictional translation and literary criticism.