Literary Translation From The Perspective Of Aesthetics Of Reception

The theory of aesthetics of reception postulates that a literary work is a skeleton of "schematized aspects" full of "spots of indeterminacy" and "blanks" and every reader must have a certain extent of horizon of expectations before his reading. The process of the reader's reading is just the process of concretizing the "spots of indeterminacy" and filling in the "blanks" and at the same time, it is also the fusion process between the reader's horizon of expectations and the original text. The theory of aesthetics of reception causes a revolution in literary criticism and consequently shifts the focus of literary criticism from texts to readers.Since two kinds of literary texts (the source text and the translated version) are involved in literary translation, the theory of aesthetics of reception is also available to the study of literary translation. Application of this theory into translation studies brings our attention to the translators' reception process of the source texts and the target language readers' reception process of the translated versions as well. Meanwhile, the subjective roles that translators play in the course of translating and their creative activities are also taken into account. In the light of the theory of aesthetics of reception, this thesis attempts to prove the importance and necessity of the proper recreation made by translators in the process of literary translation.This thesis holds that translators, required by their responsibilities as intermediaries in cross-cultural communications, need to fulfill much more complicated reception processes as compared with the general readers. On the one hand, as ordinary readers, translators need to readjust and reconstruct their horizon of expectations in accordance with the content of the source text so as to achieve the most accurate interpretation of the source texts in the process of accepting the source text. On the other hand, translated versions are usually accepted by the target language readers gradually. Translators need to take their current target language readers' reading expectations into consideration and help them construct their horizon of expectations so as to produce readable and acceptable translated versions in the process of translating.The thesis makes a brief review of the long history of translating the Chinese classic Hong Lou Meng into English and the progressive reception of this great novel in the English-speaking societies. Then combining with the reception situation of the two completed translated versions translated by Yang Xianyi and Hawkes, the thesis emphasizes that in order to cater to the English readers' reading habits and their reception level so as to make his version accepted in the English-speaking societies, Hawkes makes creative efforts in considering and constructing the English readers' horizon of expectations, spreading the Chinese culture into the English-speaking societies and exploiting the advantage of the target language as well.