Analysis On The Translators' Subjectivity From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

Aesthetics of reception appears with the revolution in the field of literary criticism as one method in literary research,in the west during the 1960's.The theoretical bases of Aesthetics of reception are philosophical hermeneutics and phenomenology aesthetics and it is an independent theoretical system which depends on the readers' reception of the work.Jauss and Iser have pointed out the appealing structure and indeterminacy,which needs the implied readers' fusion of expectations and the historicity of understanding to concretize them,in order to meet the horizon of expectation of the target readers.The aesthetics of reception has provided new research methods to the translation study and emphasized on the consideration of the readers.It has explained that the translation standard should be multiple and synchronic form the perspective of the reader and translator.What's more,the initiative of the translator during the process of translation has been highlighted,providing a new way to the study of the translators' subjectivity.From the perspective of reception aesthetics,the translators' subjectivity can extend to the most.On the one hand,because of the indeterminacy of the source text,the translators as-readers can show their subjectivity during the process of understanding,making effort to meet the horizon of expectation of the source text to the most;on the other hand,as the translators they have to produce the target texts creatively,in order to meet the horizon of expectation of the target readers.This study attempts to explore the passiveness purposiveness and initiative of the translators' subjectivity from the indeterminacy and fusion of horizons with the research methods of contrastive analysis method,the descriptive method and the qualitative research method.As a prolific Australian writer,Colleen McCullough has written The Thorn Birds in 1977,which has the great social value and been one of best-seller in1980s.The novel has profound literary value,telling the story among the three generations of the family.There have been five Chinese versions,one co-translated version by Xiao Ming and Chen Mingjin(1983),the four versions by Zeng Hu(1990,1998,2008,2010).There are only 8 researches on The Thorn Birds from the perspective of translation.This thesis aims to make a systematic contrastive analysis on the translators' subjectivity from the perspective of reception aesthetics,and taking two Chinese versions of The Thorn Birds as a case study:Xiao Ming and Chen Mingj in's version in 1983 and Zeng Hu's version in 2010.The thesis comes to a result that the concretization of the indeterminacies from the source texts can be observed at the linguistic aspect,as well at the cultural aspect.The two versions share the same fusion of horizons with the source language text from the cultural aspect:the physical world and the human society(the terms of the myth and leisure),showing the passiveness of the translators'subjectivity.Meanwhile they have the different horizons with the source language text from the linguistic aspect and the cultural aspect including the human society(the terms of the religion,the custom and the image),and the mental world(the terms of the aesthetic psychology and the ethical psychology),showing the purposiveness and initiative of the translators' subjectivity.The research also finds out that the three aspects of the translators' subjectivity in Zeng Hu's version(2010)and Xiao Ming and Chen Mingjin's version(1983)shows in the following parts.From the perspective of passiveness,both of the two versions are constrained by the factors of the target language readers and the source language texts:on the one hand,taking the target readers' reception into consideration,domestication strategy is adopted;on the other hand,in order to be faithful to the source texts,foreignization strategy is employed.From the perspective of purposiveness,the two versions adopt different translation strategies out of different purposes.Zeng's version(2010)is mainly target language text oriented and adopts domestication strategy as he considers more of the target language readers' reception;Xiao Ming and Chen Mingjin's version(1983)is mainly source language text oriented and adopts foreignization strategy in order to spread western culture.From the perspective of initiative,they transfer creatively in different translation methods.Zeng's version(2010)mainly adopts nine translation methods and Xiao Ming and Chen Mingjin's version(1983)mainly adopts six translation methods,exerting their subjectivity to a full play.