A Study Of "Dialogism" In Translation In The Light Of Receptive Aesthetics

With the change of translation concepts, modern translation studies gradually take translation as a dialogic process. In that way, the study of dialogism is essential in translation studies. What translation studies concern are inter-subjective dialogue and the meaning generated in it.The thesis begins with the discussion of the nature of literary text. Literary text comes from the communication in human's production. It exists and realizes itself during the reading of the reader. In other words, the meaning of literary text is set up in the dialogue between the reader and the author. As a special form of literary reading and literary creation, translation also owns its dialogic character. Similarly, translation also comes from the dialogue and communication between people, so it exists in the dialogue between the translator and the author. Exactly speaking, there are two steps in the act of translation ---understanding and creation. The meaning is found in the dialogue between subjects.The writer of this thesis analyzes the dialogue in translation from the angle of receptive aesthetics. According to the theory, the translator should be the major role in translation, which contains the inter-subjective dialogue and the sociality of the translator. Translation is the process of understanding and interpreting of the translator to the text. It is equal to the process where the "horizon of expectations" of the translator and "vocative structure" of the text cooperate and interact with each other. Meaning is generated in the dialogue and communication between the translator and the author through the medium --- the text.The theories and schools henceforth, such as the reader-response criticism and deconstruction, are all based on the theory of receptive aesthetics. Unfortunately, they overstress the individuality of the translator and neglect the sociality of human existence, which cause arbitrariness in meaning-generation. Habermas's theory of communicative action advocates the plural subjects of social activity and gets rid of the arbitrariness of meaning generated by only one subject or two subjects; therefore it provides a more rational angle to translation studies.