A Study Of Postmodernist Novel Translation From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

Postmodernism, an important stage in the history of the western literature, has made a great influence on the literary creative writing in many countries. The postmodernist novel, which arose in the European and American countries from the 1960 s, has its unique language form, literary style and literary theme that surprised many readers. Since the 1980 s, western postmodernist novels have been translated into Chinese, which aroused Chinese readers’ interest. And there are also a number of contemporary literary writers affected by these works, who are active in the reform of language and form of novel. Postmodernist novel’s language forms, writing style and cultural connotations are different from those of the traditional novel, which are big challenges to translators. Language becomes an important factor of postmodernism, and even occupies the dominant position. It deconstructs the authority of the “reality” and creates a new world with language. A reader’s initiative is strengthened in the process of reading and the reader needs to reconstruct his language structure and cognitive structure through his own reading. The uncertainty of its language brings challenges to translation.Reception Aesthetics, based on hermeneutics and phenomenology, emphasizes the translator’s subjectivity. On the basis of the theory of hermeneutics, Jauss discusses concepts such as “horizon”, “horizon of expectation”, “fusion of horizon”, and so on. And under the influence of the phenomenology Iser proposes such concepts as “indeterminacy”, “blank” and “response-inviting structure”. These concepts coincide with the creative ideas of the postmodernist novel.This thesis aims to apply Reception Aesthetics to postmodernist novel translation to prove its feasibility and provide a wider research perspective of this field. Based on Reception Aesthetics, this thesis first discusses the internal connection between postmodernist novel’s creation and Reception Aesthetics, and then chooses the two representative Chinese versions of Cloud Atlas written by David Mitchell as its study material. From the perspective of Reception Aesthetics, the thesis makes a comparative analysis of reproduction of stylistic features(namely abundant cultural connotation, changeable language style and unique narrative structure and form) in two Chinese versions.The analysis shows that(1) When two translators reproduce cultural connotations, both the translators’ and the target readers’ horizons of expectation have a great influence on their translations;(2) When reproducing language style, in order to make the target readers have a better reading experience, two translators try to restore the original language style, but because of the differences between languages and other influencing factors, the reproduction of language style is not very ideal;(3) The narrative structure and form of the Chinese versions basically follow the original, which is beneficial for the target readers to appreciate the original’s postmodernist features. After the analysis, the author also puts forward some suggestions on the translation of postmodernist novel for reference. The purpose of this thesis is not to judge the relative merits of two Chinese versions, but hope for promoting the development of the theory and practice of postmodernist novel translation in the future.