A Comparative Study Of The Two Translated Versions Of The Old Man And The Sea From The Perspective Of Reception Theory

The Old Man and the Sea is a novel written by Ernest Hemingway which is a masterpiece in the literature history. It has been 60 years since it’s first published in 1952. There are over 20 Chinese versions of The Old Man and the Sea in China, the first Chinese version is translated by Yu Guangzhong, and the most popular version is translated by Wu Lao. The thesis introduces main concepts as horizon of expectation, indeterminacies and gaps, appealing structures, aesthetic pleasure in the comparative study. It treats the novel and the two translated versions as the corpus, based on which detailed examples are provided and analyzed.As a literature criticism, reception theory, also called receptional aesthetic, an important school of western contemporary literature theory.The horizon of expectation is the core of the whole acceptable aesthetics theory system; It is the comprehensive reaction in which readers can combine historical consciousness of society, the mentality of nation together with aesthetic cognitive, moral consciousness and cultural quality of the individual. Literary text is full of gaps and indeterminacies derived from multi-level systems of language structure. They appeal readers to communicate with the text by concretizing the gaps adjusting their horizons and reconstructing the meaning.Under the framework of aesthetics of reception, the author selects 40 pieces sample texts from the two versions with obvious differences, and analyzes them in detail from the following three aspects:horizon of expectation, indeterminacies and gap, appealing structures.The findings of the research are as follows:On the horizon of expectation, generally speaking, translator’s horizon of expectation can be influenced by many factors, such as social background and religion belief; the translated versions are different depending on the understanding for the indeterminacy and gaps; Right understanding for the work’s style and its tone contributes to the right appealing structure and the appropriate versions.Based on the study of this thesis, translating process can be re-evaluate and discover respective advantages of different translators, which can become the stimuli to encourage more new translating versions. This thesis aims at providing a perspective that literary translation studies can refer to.However, due to reception theory’s unavoidable subjective and the lack of explicit regulation of their literary value judgment in reception theory leads to relativism which makes this thesis has limitations. Suggestions are given for future study. One is that more efforts should be spent on the study of the translators’ inner world, which means the translators’ aesthetic concept about translation. The other is that other aspects of translators’ role in translation can be further investigated.