A Study Of Howard Goldblatt's Translation Of Wolf Totem From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

Wolf Totem,written by Jiang Rong,is a semi-autobiographical novel with wolf as its narrative theme.Wolf Totem tells a story of nomadic people and wolves on the grasslands of Inner Mongolia and reflects the relationship between man and nature.Different from other novels,Wolf Totem presents considerable argumentative words of the author and descriptions about the protagonists' psychological activities.Since its publication in China in 2004,Wolf Totem has been widely welcomed by readers.Translated into English by Howard Goldblatt in 2008,Wolf Totem has enjoyed great popularity in western readers too.Reception aesthetics stresses the reader's status and the reader becomes an indispensable part of literature.Reception aesthetics has a great impact on translation,making the perspectives of translation studies turn to the translator and the reader.This thesis,based on reception aesthetics,studies the English version of Wolf Totem,including presenting Howard Goldblatt's translation views and specific translation methods of Wolf Totem.The translation of Wolf Totem is successful.On one hand,when translating Wolf Totem,the translator takes the readers' receptivity into consideration and has his unique translation views: remaining faithful to the source text and the target text,betraying and rewriting theinformation of the source text;on the other hand,the translator uses proper translation methods,mainly including literal translation,free translation,omission,addition,transliteration and annotation,which meet the target readers' horizon of expectations and attach great importance to the target readers' reception.