A Study On Translation Of Linguistic Deviation In Ulysses From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

From the perspective of target readers’ reception, this thesis studies the translation of linguistic deviation in Ulysses, a stream of consciousness novel from Ireland. In this fiction, James Joyce(1882-1941), the original author, employs a lot of linguistic deviation rich in meaning and manifestation characterized by uniqueness and novelty. All these features bring to the work fantastic musical and visual effects, help enrich linguistic expressions and leave unforgettable impression on readers. This kind of language not only challenges the language abilities of native readers and poses challenges to translators’ translation skills from English to Chinese, but also sets high standards for target language readers’ appreciation capabilities. If translators can get useful translation advice from readers about how to translate these deviant expressions, then it will help improve translation quality. Therefore, it is reasonable to associate translation of linguistic deviation with target language readers’ reception.At present, there are two major kinds of researches on the translation of linguistic deviation in Ulysses. The first one prefers to abandon the distinct features of the source text, which means to translate linguistic deviation to common expressions, while the second one prefers to retain these features, which means to translate linguistic deviation in the same way as the original does. The former, at the cost of ruining original deviant linguistic effects, underestimates readers’ appreciation abilities and denies them of the rights to taste its charm. The latter, at the cost of readability of the target text, overestimates readers’ energy and patience, and sets limits to readability. The weakness of previous studies lies in that most of them do not explore the reception of the translation from the angle of readers, though researchers have realized the importa nce of target readers in the process of translation practice. Then to what extent do Chinese readers accept the translation? Do they harbor different attitudes toward different translation versions? Besides, previous researches have mainly focused on two translation versions of Ulysses, namely the first one by Xiao Qian and Wen Jieruo, and the second one by Jin Di; somehow they seldom study Liu Xiangyu’s selective translation of Ulysses.By mainly resorting to Reception Aesthetics as the guiding theory in carrying out a readers’ reception survey, this thesis studies translation practice based on readers’ feedback. It focuses on the reception status of the three Chinese translation versions and explores the translation problems and solutions. Taking its musical and visual aspects as an example, it analyzes whether the three translation versions take good care of both the effects of linguistic deviation as well as the readability of the target texts, respectively from lexical, syntactic and textual levels, and also makes up for the losses when necessary, based on the survey feedback.This thesis employs literature review, questionnaire, theory validity and logical induction and other methods. By linking translation theory with translation practice, it explores the translation techniques about linguistic deviation of Ulysses, on the basis of readers’ reception.It briefly introduces James Joyce and his masterpiece Ulysses. Then it reviews its current translation studies at home and abroad, and points out the research object and research significance. By putting forward Reception Aesthetics as the guiding translation theory, it explicates the major logic behind studying the deviant expressions of Ulysses from the perspective of readers’ reception. At last, it carries out a readers’ reception survey and gets useful feedback which exposes Chinese readers’ reception status of the three translation versions and correspondent translation methods are concluded.Based on the readers’ reception survey, some problems come to the surface as follows: 1) Chinese readers do not completely accept the Chinese translation of Ulysses, and comparatively speaking, Jin Di’s translation is the mostly accepted. Target readers advise that translators should take into consideration both the original features of linguistic deviation as well as the readability of the target text. 2) for translation of linguistic deviation, musical and visual losses are very conspicuous, both of which are key factors that affect linguistic features and readers’ reception level; 3) there is scope for improvement in adding annotations because too many detailed explanations only lower readers’ satisfaction; 4) target readers call on translators to give full play to their imagination and creativity when coping with linguistic deviation.The significance of this study lies in that it finds out the translation problems of linguistic deviation in Ulysses from the target readers’ point of view and carries out discussions on these problems, which may provide suggestions for future translators. It promotes the application of target readers’ reception survey in translation studies, and advices translators to communicate more frequently with target readers so that together they come up with effective translation methods to deal with linguistic deviation.The innovation points of this research are as follows. Under the guidance of Reception Aesthetics, it extends the research approaches on translation of linguistic deviation in Ulysses by combining both quantitative and qualitative analyses. Besides, by conducting comparative studies on the three translation versions, it breaks through the previous limitations of exploring merely two versions.