Translation Of Rhetoric In Mao Zedong’s Poetry From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

Mao Zedong is not only a great Marxian, proletarian revolutionist, theorist, philosopher and militarist, but a unique poet in the history. His poetry has its own unique aesthetic characteristic and catches people’s attentions with their profound ideological contents, distinct artistic style and magnificent imagery.So far, Mao’s poetry has been widely circulating around the world with many versions in different languages by Chinese and foreign scholars. Among these foreign versions, the English ones account for a large percentage. From the perspective of reception aesthetics, this thesis represents rhetorical beauty on one hand, and on the other hand, reveals inevitable treason in phonetic, lexical and semantic rhetoric, as well as aesthetic retainment and ablation during translating of Mao’s poetry in four versions (namely, Oxford’s version in1965, the official version in1976, Zhao Zhentao’s version in1992and Xu Yuanchong’s version in1993). This study is a new attempt in research of Mao’s poetry versions, and does not aim at deciding which version is better but explores the reasons for the diversity in translation of the same text for the purpose of showing readers the beauty of Mao’s poetry in different versions.Besides introduction and conclusion, there are four chapters in this thesis. Chapter one introduce Mao’s poetry and four versions; Chapter two puts forward reception aesthetic theory, introduces the core concepts of "horizon of expectation","fusion of horizon","indeterminacy and meaning blank","implied reader" and "appealing structure", as well as explains appropriateness of this theory for translation of rhetoric in Mao’s poetry; Chapter three discusses reception aesthetics and Mao’s aesthetic view, and also reproduces rhetoric beauty in Mao’s poetry; From the perspective of reception aesthetics, Chapter four presents inevitable rhetoric treason during translating of Mao’s poetry, considering in translators’double identity, and probes into the reasons.Finally, the thesis comes to conclusions:translating process is the result of two "fusions of horizons". Under the guidance of "text center" turning to "reader center" in reception aesthetics, translators should develop their subjectivity and creativity. However, due to different historical and cultural backgrounds, as well as different translation purposes and strategies, translators produce different versions. So, we encourage the birth of different versions of the same text, which reflects the cultural communications and transference on one hand, and on the other hand, is helpful to improve the current assessing criteria.