A Study Of The English Version Of Decoded From The Perspective Of Reception Theory

With the in-depth development of world multi-polarization and economic globalization,culture has increasingly become one of the core elements that control state power relation,playing a more and more important role in the contest of comprehensive national strength.Under such circumstances,a lot of Chinese works have also been translated into foreign languages and promoted overseas.In order to gain more experience and help with this progress,instead of simply focusing on translating and promoting,we also need to examine how foreign readers have accepted those translated works.Studies on successful translated works,for example,this thesis,can provide people with new inspiration and precious experience,which later on can be used to improve subsequent translating missions and help future translations to be better received.The successful translated work the author chose is the English version of Mai Jia’s novel Decoded created by Olivia Milburn,which has been well received and gained both honor and market in the foreign land.At the meantime,since the focus of this thesis is on the "readers",the author therefore chose reception theory,a literature theory that emphasizes the importance of readers,as her theoretical basis.In a sentence,this thesis conducts a descriptive research on its study object from the perspective of reception theory.After examining the choice of the translating object,the translator and the translation strategies,the thesis reaches the following conclusions—first,the current mission of introducing Chinese culture to the outside world should be cultivating readers,which indicates that apart from translating and introducing Chinese classics,more types of works should be taken into consideration,as long as they fit in the target reader group.Second,criteria to judge translators are numerous,but the core principle,according to the reception theory,is to see whether his or her expectation horizon of aesthetics could successfully convey and balance cultural differences.In that case,translators with twofold cultural identities may be a better choice.Third,flexible translation strategies,be it addition or omission,domestication or foreignization,should be adopted in the translating process,so long as it can help the translated work to be better received among target readers.