A Study On Ren Rongrong’s Translation Of E.B. White’s Children’s Literature From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

This thesis attempts to make a study on Ren Rongrong’s translation strategies on children’s literature by comparing the Chinese versions and English versions of E. B. White’s children’s literature from the perspective of reception aesthetics, most notably represented by “the reader’s role and status”, “horizon of expectations” and “fusion of horizons”.Ren Rongrong, one of the most renowned translators of children’s literature, has made great contributions to the development of Chinese children’s literature. E. B. White is one of the most acclaimed award-winning American authors of children’s literature in the world. Stuart Little, The Trumpet of the Swan and Charlotte’s Web are ranked as the world classic children’s works, which are best-selling books, and made him earned the great reputation worldwide. Ren Rongrong’s translated versions of E. B. White’s children’s literature have aroused wide public concerns among children readers and adult readers in China. And one of the reasons why Ren Rongrong’s translations have been well received among children lies in his application of translation strategies. Thus, the thesis chooses these three works as the target texts to analyze his translation strategies.Traditionally, the text and the author are considered as the inviolable and crucial but the reader and the translator are unimportant and passive receptors. While the reception aesthetics regards reader as the active principle part in literary appreciation. Some representative viewpoints have also been put forward in the reception aesthetics, such as “horizon of expectation”, “fusion of horizons” and “reader’s role and status”. According to Jauss, the representative of reception aesthetics, translation is not a simple interpretation of the original text. Firstly, the translator, reads and interprets the original text and conduct a dialogue with the author. He/she fuses his/her horizon of expectations with the writer. Then, the translator will take the target reader’s aesthetic experience and expectations into consideration and attempts to shorten the aesthetic distance between the reader’s horizon of expectation and the horizon reflected in the literary work. Lastly, the translator will adopt some useful translation strategies to transmit the original author’s ideas. The whole translation process is a complicated and huge task. So bearing children in mind, in the circle of “the original writer-the translator- the TL reader”, Ren Rongrong has adopted many useful translation strategies, including repetition, onomatopoeia, rhythmic sentence and so on. In addition, he uses short sentences and oral linguistic style to render a better understanding for children readers, which coincide with the principles of reception aesthetics. Ren Rongrong’s translations succeed in entertaining and educating children in his own way. His translated versions fulfill the ideology and the major contents of reception aesthetics.By making a comprehensive analysis of Ren Rongrong’s Chinese versions of E. B. White’s children’s literature with the reception aesthetics as the guide, this thesis intends to testify that reception aesthetics is an feasible and far-reaching theory to guide children’s literature translation practice, which could provide an angle for the study of Ren Rongrong’s translation strategies and a new enlightenment for the research of the translation of children’s literature. What’s more, specifically, it attempts to examine whether Ren Rongrong’s versions are faithful to the style of the original works and transmit the original author’s ideas as well as meet the demands of the children readers. This study will be more helpful for those who intend to do the translation work in the field of children’s literature.