On Misreading In Literary Translation

Misreading mainly originates from cultural discrepancy. When confronted with foreign cultures, people tend to make judgments and interpretations based on what they are familiar with or on the needs of their own culture. The consequence is the distortion of the other culture.For this typical phenomenon, the traditional view has considered it as negative or derogatory because it is an impediment to a true and thorough understanding of another culture. In fact, misreading truly reflects where the blockade in cultural communication is and highlights the deformation and even distortion between cultures. Therefore, study on this topic is of unusual significance.The thesis consists of five chapters in addition to an introduction and a conclusion.The Introduction discusses the tendency of shifting the translation research perspective from the angle of language to culture and its importance to the research into misreading. The present study situation of misreading, the significance of studying this topic, and the purpose of the thesis are also presented.Chapter One provides the theoretical foundation of the thesis. By employing the core concepts such as "pre-understanding", "horizon of expectation" and "fusion of horizon" from hermeneutics and the reception of aesthetics, the paper analyzes the possibility of misreading in literary translation.Chapter Two discusses the features of the literary text. A literary text is a dialectical unity of determinacy and indeterminacy, and of closeness and openness. Consequently, each text has only one schematic structure but with many ways of being filled in; each text is open but the degree to...