On Translator's Subjectivity From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

For a long time,traditional translation studies only focused on the literary text and its author.The translator is regarded as an unimportant character.It was not until the "Cultural Turn" in 1970s that the status of translator has been finally highlighted.As a challenge to traditional literary criticism,reception aesthetics shifts the focus from the author and the literary text to the reader.Based on Hans Robert Jauss's"Horizon of Expectation" and Wolfgang Iser's "Indeterminacy",reception aesthetics not only enlarges the scope of literary studies,but also provides translation studies with a new perspective.From the perspective of reception aesthetics,the translator plays an active role in the process of understanding and interpretation of the source text.Translators can be compared to a linking bridge between the source text and the target readers.The combination of reception aesthetics with literary translation studies enables us to explore the subjectivity of the translator in the translation process.Walden is the representative work of the famous writer Henry David Thoreau,which is currently recognized as one of the greatest works in American literature.Thoreau describes the harmonious relationship of man and nature,and reflects on the problems in society in the book.In recent years,with the increasing environmental degradation and public's passions for Walden,there comes a new wave of retranslation and reprint of Walden in China.Walden is hard to translate due to its rich language,complex sentence structure,huge amount of quotations and rhetorical devices.So far,there are only few articles focusing on the comparative study of the Chinese versions on Walden from the perspective of reception aesthetics.Within the theoretical framework of reception aesthetics,a comparative case study of three Chinese versions of Walden by Xu Chi,Pan Qingling and Li Jihong will be conducted in ways of descriptive and qualitative analysis.This thesis consists of three chapters.Chapter one is the literature review.Chapter two discusses translator's subjectivity in literary translation from the perspective of reception aesthetics.Chapter three presents a case study on translator's subjectivity of three Chinese versions of Walden.By discussing the differences between the three versions in terms of lexis,syntax,rhetoric indeterminacies as well as cultural horizons,and analyzing the influencing factors of the differences,this paper aims to demonstrate the role of the translator that played in the process of literary translation and explore how reception aesthetics embodied in the three different versions.This paper hopes to provide a new angle to the study of Reception Aesthetics and translator's subjectivity.By analyzing typical examples concerning the differences in the three versions,this thesis found that:based on the theory of Reception Aesthetics,different translators in different times may have different interpretations of the same text,which affected by different historical background,cultural awareness and personal literary competence.The three Chinese versions of Walden all carry the distinguishing feature of linguistic forms,cultural connotation and literary meaning.Xu Chi's version is loyal to the original style,while the meaning in Pan Qingling and Li Jihong's version is closer to the original text,Li's translation can better meet the expectations of modern readers at the linguistic and cultural level.The translator needs to exert its subjectivity in the process of translation.First the translator should understand the full meaning of the text and concretize the indeterminacies.Then,the translator should adjust the translation strategies accordingly to satisfy the horizon of expectation of target readers.