Study On Two Chinese Translations Of Mansfield Park From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

Recently, China has got more and more involved in communication with othercountries in academic field. Then all kinds of academic theories are flooding into Chinaand hit the traditional ideas of various fields at home, certainly including translation field.Reception aesthetics whose founders are Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser bringsrevolutionary influence to translation field. Traditional translation theory thinks that theoriginal text is the basis of translation and the original author is the center of translation,and this viewpoint has profoundly affected Chinese translation for a long time. By contrast,reception aesthetics lays stress on recipient s (translator or reader) initiative in translationactivity strongly.This paper which is based on the previous researches on reception aesthetics and isguided by fusion of horizons and text-appealing structure of reception aesthetics does theaesthetic studies to the two Chinese translations of Mansfield Park by the method ofqualitative analysis. The paper describes and analyzes the two Chinese translations ofMansfield Park mainly from three aspects fusion of horizons between the translator andthe author, fusion of horizons between the translator and the target reader andtext-appealing structure. The translator has two roles in translation process the specialreader and the creator of the translation version. Therefore, the translator must achieve thefusion of horizons with the original author and realize the text-appealing structure firstly.He/She should clearly realize the original author s writing style and aims, correctlyunderstand the original contents and properly deal with the text-appealing structures in thesource text. Then to get a successful translation version, the translator must achieve thefusion of horizons with the target reader. He/She should consider the target reader sacceptability to language, cognitive competence, cultural orientation and aestheticstandards. The paper concludes that: explaining the translation version of literature from theperspective of reception aesthetics is an effective way; reception aesthetics bringsenlightenment to multiplicity of translation criteria. Therefore, the present author alsohopes that this paper can give a hand to the study of theory of aesthetics of reception andMansfield Park.