A Comparative Study On Translator’s Subjectivity Of Idioms In Hong Lou Meng From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

Traditional translation theories regulate the translator to be loyal to the author and the translated version to the source text. The translator is required to conceal his or her subjectivity as much as possible, seek for author’s true intention, and find out the objective sense of the source text so as to ensure the invisibility of the translator. In a word, traditional translation theories stress the center function of source text and author. As a consequence, translation study is confined to the study on linguistic equivalence and the initiative intervention of the translator as a translating subject is neglected. The role of translator was not accepted until the cultural turn in1970s, after which translation theories began to foreground translator’s subjectivity, translator was therewith promoted to the creative master from the loyal servant. Translator’s centrality, as a positive participant in translating activity, is established along with the development of translation studies. This thesis intends to discuss the execution of translator’s subjectivity in the process of translating by comparing the translation of Chinese idioms in two English versions of Hong Lou Meng under the theoretical framework of Reception Aesthetics.Reception Aesthetics, or Reception Theory, was born at the end of1960s. Its representatives-Hans Rober Jauss and Wolfgang Iser both agree on and emphasize reader’s central position though their researches have different focuses, which is a significant breakthrough and development in translation study theories. Based on Reception Aesthetics, literary work is an appealing structure that consists of many blanks and indeterminacies, which provides the possibility of various and diversified interpretations for the same literary work. And it also inspires translators, on the one hand as the reader, that all kinds of readers’ different interpretations can prolong the life of literary works. On the other hand, as the creator the translator must take target reader’s receptivity, aesthetic tendency and horizon of expectation into account, so that the aesthetic distance can be providential and the author, the translator and the reader’s horizon can get fused.As one of the Four Great Classical Novels, Hong Lou Meng is the lustrous pearl in the history of Chinese and world literature. There is abundant cultural connotation that needs to be studied and inherited in Hong Lou Meng whose literary position cannot be overwhelmed. Apart from its grand story structure, the grandeur of Hong Lou Meng also lies on the distinct characters and the proficient use of language, such as verses, ditties, odes, songs, lantern riddles, drinking game verses and couplets, which all demonstrate author’s profound and professional lingual ability, mirror China’s luxuriant traditional culture and custom, and reveal the practical and psychological state of people’s existence. As the accumulation of historical changes and the crystallization of people’s wisdom, idioms are one of the most characteristic language forms in this fiction, and the unique cultural form of sinology. The C-E translation of idioms in Hong Lou Meng is one of the difficulties, because it involves the differences in value system, aesthetic taste and religious faith between China and western world. This thesis attempts to compare the translation of idioms between Yang Hsian-yi’s and David Hawkes’English version of Hong Lou Meng under the view of translator’s subjectivity from the perspective of Reception Aesthetics.This thesis is composed of six chapters.Chapter one introduces the significance, the purposes, research techniques and the structure of this paper in order to elucidate clearly the subject.Chapter two is the literature review encompassing three parts. The first part presents the development history and explains several core concepts of Reception Aesthetics for the structural understanding to this literary theory. The second part summarizes the studies on translator’s subjectivity, including its connotation, its development since cultural turn and the researches at home and abroad. The third part specifies the definition, classifications and characteristics of Chinese idioms and the difficulties in its C-E translation.Chapter three is the theoretical framework elaborating on how Reception Aesthetics and translator’s subjectivity affect literary translation respectively, and how translator’s subjectivity affects literary translation in the light of Reception Aesthetics in the process of translator’s understanding and recreating. Chapter four illustrates briefly the fiction Hong Lou Meng, the two main translators and the two complete English versions by Yang Hsian-yi&Gladys Yang and David Hawkes&John Minford.Chapter five is the central part of this thesis by applying theory to practice. It explores the performance and reasons of translator’s subjectivity in A Dream of Red Mansions and The Story of the Stone. It at first summarizes the use of idioms in Hong Lou Meng and the translating methods utilized in the two translated versions. Then Yang’s and Hawkes’ different translating strategies are compared and exampled. The third part analyzes the two translators’discrepancies from the perspective of culture. At last it probes into the reasons that result in Yang and Hawkes’different translating techniques.Chapter six is the conclusion of this thesis, what conclusion can be made through the study, what enlightenments the paper has for future translation studies and what the merits and demerits are in this study.