The Comparative Study On Translations Of John Maxwell Coetzee’s Two Novels From The Perspective Of Reader-Response Theory

John Maxwell Coetzee was the first writer who won the Booker Prize twice.He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003.His novels revealed his exploration of survival issues and expressed his sympathy and concern for the world.Because of his unique style and extremely high-quality works,he ranks among the contemporary literary masters.The translator Zou Hailun is willing to translate the works of the Nobel Prize winners and has translated many post-colonial literatures for decades,so he is more familiar with the emotions and values conveyed by this literary genre.This thesis selected Slow Man and Michael K’s Life & Times as comparative analysis materials.These novels are highly successful works in the English world,but their Chinese translations are not well-known to Chinese readers.This paper will explore the problems inherent in Zou Hailun’s translations.Both of these translation versions belong to the middle and later period during Zou Hailun’s translation career,so his understanding of the original text is more thorough,and the quality of the translation is more mature.This thesis compared the two translations version and analyzed the progress he made in the second one and what still needs to be improved.Reader-Response Theory shifts the evaluation criteria of article quality from text to readers’ feelings.This thesis selected the three most representative evaluation points in the three Reader-Response Theory to analyze the two texts.The first one is the expectation’s horizon;the second is the presentation of the potential meaning of a text in time flows;the third is the re-creation of verbal signs.After a comparative analysis,this thesis found out that translator Zou Hailun is sometimes too loyal to the original text when translating Slow Man,and did not pay enough attention to the expectation horizon of the target readers.When translating The Life & Times of Michael K,the translator can better convey the original horizon and restore the equal expectation horizon to the original text reader for the target reader.The potential meaning of the texts gradually emerges through time flows when the reader is reading the text.In Slow Man,the translator sometimes missed or mistranslated due to the change of the time flows sequence.When translating the second work,the time flows are split more freely,and the structure reorganized according to the reading habits of Chinese readers,so that the target readers have a better reading experience.Languages are signs with meaning,and only when the signs are selected correctly by the translator can convey the correct meanings.In Slow Man,the deep meaning of the sign is often expressed in the original text,and the translator will directly translate the literal meaning.Due to cultural differences,literal translation cannot express the true intention of the original text,so it is difficult for Chinese readers to understand the true meaning of verbal signs in translation.When translating Life & Times of Michael K,the translator can break through the surface barrier of the original language.According to the reading experience of the target readers,the translator recreated the verbal signs belonging to the Chinese readers.Therefore,the translation has achieved great success.After a comparative analysis,this thesis concluded that the second translation text has improved in all aspects compared to the first one.Although the two works still have deficiencies,the translator Zou Hailun’s contribution to the world literature exchanges should be recognized.