Empirical Research On The English Translation Of Wang Wei’s Poems From Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

Under the background of globalization, international culture communication becomes more and more frequent, and translation works as the link and bridge connecting eastern and western cultures. In the process of strengthening Chinese culture soft power, Chinese classical poetry attracts many scholars and experts to engage in its English translation. As one of the most popular works translated abroad, Wang Wei’s poems and their English translation deserve more attention.Guided by Reception Aesthetics theory, this study wants to know about readers’ acceptation and evaluation of different translation versions, make translators pay attention to their subjective status and realize the significance of consideration of implied readers’ preference or horizon of expectation, enhance the acceptability of domestic scholars’ translations among the readers, especially the foreign ones and provide domestic translators with references of translation by practicing empirical research on popularity difference of six translations of Wang’s Luzhai. This thesis firstly introduces the background and significance of this research, then briefly goes over previous studies of the English translation of Wang Wei’s poems, introduces the guiding theory--Reception Aesthetics and records the process of the empirical study in details by taking six translations of Wang Wei’s Luzhai as an example.The results of this empirical research reveal that translations of western translators who are familiar with Chinese languages and cultures are more popular than that of domestic translators. Based on representation of artistic conception of the original poem, popularity of translations in prosy form is higher than that in rhymed form. Also translations showing the form beauty of the original is relatively more popular. Domestic translators should therefore bear in mind that adequate understanding of target readers’horizons of expectation and reading habits can help the spread of translation and promote the "Going-out" of Chinese cultures.