An Approach To Aesthetic Reproduction In Chinese Translation Of The Dream Giver From The Perspective Of Reception Theory

This translation report conducted research on effective ways to achieve aestheticreproduction in Chinese version of The Dream Giver under the guidance of receptionaesthetics theory.By the end of1960s, Wolfgan Iser and Hans Robert Jauss, major representativesof the Constance School in the Former Federal Republic of Germany, proposedreception aesthetics theory. This theory absorbed many useful point-of-views ofHeidegger and Gadamer’s hermeneutics and Ingarden’s phenomenology, arguing thatreaders should be the center of research and the focus should be shifted to readers’aesthetic expectation and acceptance. The theory inspires us, in the beginning oftranslation, translators have to determine the target audience, understand theirhorizons of expectation and past aesthetic experience; in the process of translation,translators have to keep readers’ horizons of expectation and the translation within theappropriate aesthetic distance, thus to achieve fusion of horizons between readers’horizons of expectation and translation as well as offer the readers fresh aestheticpleasure.The text chosen in this report The Dream Giver is an inspirational spiritual bookwritten by the New York Times best-selling author Bruce Wilkinson with succinct andmeaningful language and practical and enlightening content. Now these kinds of bookare often among the best-sellers gaining a great popularity among readers. Translatingof such kind of books is a new exploration and applying reception aesthetics theory totheir translation bears special significance.Under the guidance of reception aesthetics theory and from the perspective ofcontrolling reasonable aesthetic distance, this study tries to find out the ways toachieve aesthetic effect of the original text through translation practice. It is found thatin the process of translation, translators need to set proper aesthetic distance by eithershortening or maintaining it, and four-word-structures, reduplication words,parallelism and notes, can be regarded as the effective means to reproduce the original aesthetic effect.To sum up, this report is an attempt to apply the reception aesthetics theory totranslation practice and the various strategies and methods which are mentioned in thereport also can be taken as a reference for the other translators.