A Study Of The Translator's Reader Awareness From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

Reception Aesthetics is a kind of literary aesthetic thought in the middle and late 1960 s.Its main point of view is that literary research should focus not only on works,but also on readers,that is to say,it should attach importance to the feedback system of the works.Translation studies under the guidance of reception aesthetics is also different from traditional translation studies.It redefines the meaning of the text.Reception Aesthetics holds that literary works are created for readers,so the ultimate purpose of translation is to make the target readers accept and understand the translation.At this point,the reader's dominant position in literary translation studies has become prominent.In today's environment that advocates Chinese literature to go out,more and more scholars have begun to take translation studies,but a large number of them have only focused on the translation itself and ignored the readers who play a key role in the acceptance process.Based on the two core concepts of reception aesthetics,“appealing structure” and “horizon of expectation”,this paper analyzes the English translation of Shou Huo by Yan Lianke,a famous writer who won the Lao She Literature Prize.Through the comparison between the original text and the translated text,this thesis focuses on the concrete reflection of the translator's reader awareness in the translation process,which mainly includes the translator's consideration for the horizon of expectation and the recreation and supplement of the appealing structure of the original text.First of all,it examines the translator's judgment and consideration of the target readers' horizon of expectation.To meet the readers'directional expectation,the translator adopts a more domesticating translation method to convert unfamiliar expressions into expressions familiar to the target readers.For innovative expectations,the translator tends to preserve the heterogeneity of the work.Secondly,it examines the translator's reproduction of "indeterminacy" and "blank" in the source text.On the premise of not causing difficulties in reading,the translator fully trusts the readers and reproduces the appealing structure of the original text as much as possible.In some special circumstances,the translator also supplements the blank to help readers read better.In the facing of such a work with strong local color as Shou Huo,Carlos Rojas can still guarantee the literariness and acceptability of the translation,which is the result of the translator's full consideration of the reading experience of western readers.Based on this,it can be deduced that the translator must have a strong reader awareness,keep the reader in mind at all time,and fully consider the communication between the target readers and the target text,so as to create a successful translation that is widely accepted.