A Report On The English Translation Of My Life (Excerpts) Under The Guidance Of Reception Aesthetics Theory

My Life is an autobiography,written by an ordinary worker in Qiqihar.The autobiography consists of relatively complete and independent stories with a lot of cultural elements,historical backgrounds and personal wisdom.With high historical research value and positive energy of society,this book has particular social significance and translation value.Under the guidance of Reception Aesthetics Theory,the translator has translated more than 34,000 words of the manuscript,one third of the book.Reception Aesthetics Theory puts great stress on the active role of the reader in the process of literary reception.The three main ideas of Reception Aesthetics are distance on the aesthetics,horizon of expectation,the “indeterminacy” of the text and the “center position” of the translator.These three ideas have advantage in guiding the memoir translation.My Life contains a large number of Chinese folk cultures,words and phrases with Chinese characteristics.In the process of translation,it is difficult for translators to find the corresponding words and sentences in target language.Thus,the main points and great difficulties in translating is to fill in these semantic indeterminacy and to make the book fully understood and accepted by the target language readers.Under the guidance of the Reception Aesthetics Theory,the translator tried to deal with the problems mentioned above by using some translation methods and techniques,such as imitation,paraphrase,idiomatic translation,addition,omission,and combination.In the translation process,the translator should fully consider the aesthetic experience,expressive habits,cultural backgrounds of the target text readers and take subjective initiative.In addition,with the help of expressive means of target language,the translator tried to fill in the gap between the source language and the target language,achieving functional equivalence between the translation and the source text,so as to meet readers’ expectation horizon.Besides,this report will deepen and widen the research and the application of the Reception Aesthetics Theory in folk culture translation based on reader orientations,aswell as provide some reference for folk culture translation in the future.