A Report On E-C Translation Of The Physical Life Of Woman:Advice To The Maiden,Wife,and Mother(Excerpts) From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics Theory

As feminism flourishes in the inclusive and multicultural society,topics about love,marriage,fertility,and divorce are heatedly discussed.While numerous books are targeting female audiences,few works give full attention to both women’s physical health and mental development.This report is based on the translation of the source text The Physical Life of Woman:Advice to the Maiden,Wife and Mother(excerpts)written by George H.Napheys,a physician-writer,who was born in the 19th century.The translator applies Reception Aesthetics as the guiding theory,as it emphasizes readers’ core position and that target readers of the original text are primarily modern females.Three important concepts support the translator’s analysis in the report,namely,the horizon of expectations,the fusion of expectations,and indeterminacy.The theory points out that the aesthetic distance between readers’ horizon of expectations and the horizon of the text directly influences their acceptance of the text.Meanwhile,indeterminacy should exist between target readers and the work to satisfy their needs of imagination.Under the guidance of the Reception Aesthetics Theory,the translator analyzes some typical translation difficulties at the lexical,syntactic,and stylistic levels.Difficulties at the lexical level include complex nouns,adjectives,and idioms,for which the translator adopts translation methods such as paraphrasing,borrowing,etc.For difficulties at the syntactic level,reconstruction is adopted to deal with long sentences,based on the differences between Chinese and English.Meanwhile,the conversion of sentence members and coreference are also adopted to enhance readability.Last but not least,to retain the original style,the translator analyzes from two dimensions,including the manner of speaking and modal particles.In the last chapter,major findings and inadequacies of the report are discussed.The translator hopes to contribute references and inspirations for other translators working on non-contemporary and cross-disciplinary English literature with this report.