On Pai Hsien-yung’s Self-translated Version Of Taipei People From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

Pai Hsien-yung is one of Taiwan’s well-known writers. His literary work, TaipeiPeople, a collection of fourteen short stories, is praised as a classic in oversea Chineseliterature. Because of its power and charm, many scholars, both Chinese and Western,have tried to translate it into English, but they only managed to complete several ofthese short stories instead of the whole owing to difficulties in translation. Eventually, itwas Pai Hsien-yung, the author of this work who embraced the challenge andcooperated with Patia Yasin in a full English version. The self-translated Englishversion of Taipei People provides a valuable source for translation studies. However,this version has not been given due attention by scholars in this field over a long periodof time. A small number of researches concentrate on the self-translation aspect of thework, mainly involving comparative study of one of the short stories translated by theself-translator and a conventional translator, or thematic analysis of this work from theperspective of literary stylistics. Seldom have researchers attempted an overallexamination of the whole translated text.Reception Aesthetics is a literary theory that emphasizes the central position ofreaders, shedding new light on translation studies. In the process of creating the targettext, the translator interprets the original text as a reader, filling the gaps and resolvingthe indeterminacies working with the original text’s response-inviting structure.Although the reader is the decisive factor in the process of interpreting the original text,the translator as a special reader has to interpret the text on the basis of the source textand cannot exert his subjectivity arbitrarily when filling the blanks; without readers’reception, the text is meaningless. Readers’ reception process is one of reconstructingand completing the literary text. In translation, translators have to take into accounttarget readers’ aesthetic taste and reception ability in order to successfully realize theconveying of the original spirit and achieve the translation goal. Previous practice hasproved that the application of Reception Aesthetics into translation studies is feasible.This thesis has adopted three aspects of Reception Aesthetics, namely,“Text’sResponse-inviting Structure”,“Implied Reader” and “Reader’s Horizon of Expectation”,to conduct a research on some translation phenomena in the self-translated version ofTaipei People. The study shows that the self-translation of Taipei People happens tocoincide with these concepts of Reception Aesthetics. First of all, the meaning of a literary work is completed only through the combination of the literary text itself andreaders’ participation. Because of cultural differences, some of the contents in theoriginal text are obstacles to target readers, hindering their interaction with thetranslated text. Therefore, in the process of cultural rendering, Pai Hsien-yung gives areasonable interpretation in the translation to help readers better understand the originalspirit and actively participate in the version so as to complete the meaning of thetranslated literary work. Moreover, although the self-translator can take full advantageof his special role in the translation, freely modifying, adjusting the original text andeven exerting his creativity for the sake of new readers, as a translator, Pai Hsien-yungshows great faithfulness to his original text. Finally, the translator pays special attentionto target readers’ aesthetic taste and reception ability. To facilitate a better understandingof the original spirit by target readers, Pai Hsien-yung adopts some specific translationstrategies, such as annotation, addition, conversion and creative expectation to achievethe “horizon fusion” between target readers and the version.