A Contrastive Study Of The Three English Versions Of Mencius From The Perspective Of Horizon Of Expectation

Readers' reception theory,also called reception aesthetics theory,is an important contemporary literary translation theory as well as literary criticism theory.Different from the traditional translation researches which centered on the author and the text,reception theory stresses the role of the reader.Here the reader refers to the translator and the target reader in that the translator is the first reader of the source text who decodes the information and then recodes it for the intended audience.As one of the core concepts,horizon of expectation refers to the reader's literary expectations based on his aesthetic experience.Reception theory not only promotes the development of translation theory,but also provides a new angle for the translation studies.Mencius is known as the “Second Sage”,who is one of the prominent representatives of the Confucian School.Because of the diversified contents and insightful thoughts,Mencius is his representative work and was translated into Latin,French,English and many other languages.The thesis will study the English translated versions of Mencius,which are James Legge's version,D.C.Lau' version and the version translated by Zhao Zhentao,Zhang Wenting and Zhou Dingzhi so as to help readers better understand the original and the three famous translations of Mencius and promote the dissemination of Confucianism as well as the communication between Chinese and western cultures.Given that the studies on English translations of Mencius are mainly done from philosophical hermeneutics,skopos theory,memetics,etc.and that there is not any research on the analysis of the diversity of the three versions in the light of horizon of expectation,one of the core concepts of reception theory,the thesis aims to apply horizon of expectation in the study of the three English translated versions of Mencius to prove its feasibility,provide a new angle for the English translations of Mencius and fill in the blank.The research questions of the thesis are whether horizon of expectation of reception theory can be applied in the study of the three English translations of Mencius and that if applicable,what the concrete embodiment and influence are.Faced with these two questions,the author mainly adopts the contrastive method,case analysis and descriptive research method to study the three translations of Mencius in the view of horizon of expectation of reception theory and analyze how the translator's and reader's different horizon of expectations cause various translations.In terms of the translator's horizon of expectation,the author analyzes how the differences of historical backgrounds of translators,linguistic characteristics of translators' times and the relevant factors about translators themselves lead to different translations.In terms of the reader's horizon of expectation,firstly,the author identifies the target readers of the three versions because translators will adopt different translation methods when targeted at different readers.Secondly,through case analysis,the author studies the effects of readers' horizon of expectations on translations on the linguistic level.Finally,the author studies how the diverse considerations of translators on the target readers' cultural acceptability on the cultural level cause different translations.In this part,the translations of the five classes of culture-loaded words are mainly studied.The results show that horizon of expectation of reception theory is feasible in analyzing the reasons for the diversity of the three English translated versions of Mencius.In particular,the translator's different horizon of expectations and his diverse considerations on readers have great influence on different translations.The thesis analyzes the three English versions of Mencius from the view of horizon of expectation so as to provide a broader perspective for the study of English translations of Mencius.Besides,as a case study,the thesis can test the applicability and universality of reception theory in analyzing the reasons for the multiple translated versions of the same original text,which can promote the application of reception theory in translation studies.