Combination Of Domestication And Foreignization-Translation Strategies In The Three-Body Prorlem In Light Of Reception Aesthetics

Santi is the first Chinese science fiction that has received the Hugo Award and Liu Cixin with his Santi trilogy brings Chinese science fiction to a world level.The popularity and acknowledgment the novel gains abroad owes much credit to Ken Liu,a Chinese American science fiction writer and translator.This thesis focuses on the translation strategies Ken Liu employs in translating Santi.By applying reception aesthetics to the specific case study,it aims to account for why and how the translator combines domestication and foreignization together.The author of the paper will make a systematic analysis of the domestication and foreignization strategies by making comparisons between the text and its English translation.Cultural allusions,idioms,dialects and metaphors will be compared and analyzed,as well as the translation of some Chinese culture-specific expressions,metaphors and typical Chinese syntactic features.The translator's strategies will be explained with relevant concepts of reception aesthetics.It has been found out that the translator uses domestication as the major strategy in translating most of the cultural allusions,idioms,dialects and metaphors.Since these elements are heavily culture-loaded,they will cause great difficulty for the Western readers.With the aid of domestication,these terms are well adapted to the target reader's direct expectations for their understanding.However,the translator also employs foreignization in dealing with some idioms and syntactic features of the Chinese language,which expands the target reader's horizon of expectation and promotes Chinese culture and language features.Hopefully,the paper will provide a tiny view for scholars who want to study domestication and foreignization from the perspective of reception aesthetics and it will also provide aspirations and guidance for future science fiction translation.