Translation Report Of Science Fiction Ghost Written (Chapter One)

Reception aesthetics is a type of literary criticism theory originated from Federal Germany in the 1960s and was introduced to translation study later.The most important concepts of it include"response of readers","horizon of expectations"and"indeterminacy of the original text and vacancy of meaning".As a leading representative,Iser argued that reading was a special act,and there were many"blanks"and"indeterminacies"in the text.Meaning was hidden in the text,calling the readers to release them through"concretization".Another outstanding contributor,Jauss,thought that a text was made by readers'previous aesthetic experience,social practice,cultural backgrounds and other study experience,which would form their horizon of expectations in the reading and interpretation.The discrepancy between such expectations and the real situation of the text would form aesthetic distance,and only an appropriate distance could lead to more popularity of a work.These key concepts of reception aesthetics are of great instructive significance to translation studies.Ghost Written is one of the representative works of modern science fiction.It's also the virgin work of David Mitchell,the author of Cloud Atlas.His works is characterized by special cultural background,unique field cultures and evocative structure.Therefore,the work has highly literary value and scientific interests.Combining the background of Ghost Written and the study about David Mitchell,this study summarized the work in the course of translation systematically through the pre-translation,while-translation,after-translation based on the part translated by the author of this thesis.Meanwhile,this paper takes some examples of the flexible use of translation techniques during the translation under the guide of receptive aesthetics,in order to achieve both the fusion of"horizon of expectations"and appropriate aesthetic distance.In short,science fiction translation is not a simple text conversion.Subjective initiative of the translator plays a decisive role in completing outstanding translations.Reception theory provides a new standard for the evaluation of science fiction translation.The study of science fiction translation from the perspective of reception theory is of great reference value both to translation theory and translation practice.