Translation Of Literary Works From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

Afghan-American writer Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan. The Kite Runner is his first novel, which gets many good reviews since it came out. Characterized by vivid reproduction of the original style, Li Jihong’s version is well accepted among contemporary Chinese readers as well as in the translators’ circle; lots of translation researchers all agree that Li Jihong’s version sheds great enlightenment on Chinese literary translation both in linguistic and stylistic levels. However, there is almost no research that aims at two aspects: the translator as the reader of the source text and the reader’s active participation. Given Li Jinghong’s successful translation and limitations of previous researches, it is necessary and rewarding to study it from the perspective of Reception Aesthetics.This thesis finds its theoretical foundation in Reception Aesthetics for the study of literary translation. Reception Aesthetics puts great stress on the active role of the reader in the process of literary reception. It gives great respect to the reader with emphasis on his/her function in constructing the meaning of a literary work, allowing researchers to study the reception process of translated literary works from a dialectic perspective. The reader usually enters the reading process with his/her own horizon of expectations formed in previous reading and life experiences. The reader’s aesthetic expectation inevitably influences the translator’s translation activity.Therefore, through analyzing The Kite Runner, the author concludes that translator should consider the target reader’s horizon of expectations in the process of translation, and help them reconstruct the expectations. In other words, translator should try to strike an appropriate balance between his creative concretization and reconstruction of the readers’ horizon of expectations. It is a challenge but still rewards to further explore in the future.