Prophecy Poetry Translation From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics—a Case Study Of Xu Yuanchong's Three Hundred Tang Poems

The Tang Dynasty,recognized as the golden age of poetry,is said to be the peak period of development of classical poetry in China.There is no doubt that Tang poems are the splendid gems in Chinese and indeed world literature,which have attracted numerous scholars to do the translation from Chinese into different versions of foreign languages.Among the many scholars who engaged in the translation of Tang poetry,Xu Yuanchong's translation study from the perspective of reception enjoys a high reputation both at home and abroad.Three Hundred Tang Poems is one of his great translation works.Many scholars have studied Three Hundred Tang Poems in terms of numerals,reduplication and so on,but few of them have discussed prophecy poetry,which has the function of pre-narration.Since the research on prophecy poetry translation in Three Hundred Tang Poems is still a blank field,the author of the present thesis selects the translations of prophecy poetry in Three Tang Poems as the object of the study,summarizing their characteristics while exploring in depth the feasibility of Reception Aesthetics in guiding poetic prophecy translation.Reception Aesthetics is a theory of literary criticism emphasizing the readers' dynamic roles,which has a natural internal relation with translation.It shifts the focus of literary studies to readers and stresses functions of their participation.Readers' reception is both the beginning and the ending of the translation process.The ultimate aim is to make the target readers get as nearly as possible the same effect as was produced on the readers of the original.Therefore,the gist of prophecy poetry translation is not only language transformation but also how to entertain target readers and optimize the reception effects.Thus it's feasible and of academic value to integrate Reception Aesthetics with prophecy poetry translation.This thesis consists of six chapters.Chapter one is an introduction,introducing the whole thesis,which includes research background,objective and significance of the research,research methodology,structure of the thesis.Chapter two,is a literature review,in this part,the author discusses the previous translation studies on prophecypoetry,makes an overview of studies on translation of Three Hundred Tang Poems and gives an introduction to the previous translation studies based on Reception Aesthetics both at home and abroad.Chapter three is a theoretical framework,which introduces three key notions of Reception Aesthetics,including “Horizon of Expectations”,“Fusion of Horizon” and “Indeterminacy”.Chapter four further explicates the application of Reception Aesthetics into prophecy poetry translation in Xu Yuanchong's Three Hundred Tang Poems.Chapter five analyzes the major translation strategies Xu Yuanchong adopted in the translation of Three Hundred Tang Poems.Chapter six,is a conclusion,which concludes the major findings and implications of the thesis as well as limitations and suggestions for future studies.On the basis of the previous studies on the translation of Tang poems,the author of this thesis tries to analyze the application of the Reception Aesthetics in the English version of Three Hundred Tang Poems through the analysis of the samples chosen from Three Hundred Tang Poems,providing a new point of view on poetry translation.And the author expects that conclusions of the study can also give some aid to people who tend to study prophecy poetry translation in the future.