An Analysis Of Translation Creativity From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

In the late 1960s, aesthetics of reception, which has an intrinsic correlation with hermeneutics, swept across the whole European and American literature circle. The theory with fresh viewpoints exerts a unique influence upon literary translation circle. According to reception aesthetics, any translation must direct at its target readership—the object that a translated product serves. A translated product will not exist until it is recognized by its reader. It requires that translators take the target readers and their needs for reading into consideration in the process of translation and then produce the corresponding translated text (TT) accordingly rather than follow the track of the original author step by step. It is out of the perspective of translators'consideration for target readership that the author of this thesis aims to explore the phenomena and the characteristics of translators, consideration for target readers by borrowing the relevant theory of reception aesthetics.This thesis can be divided into five parts. The first part serves as an introduction, in which the thesis content, the reason of writing, and the questions need to be solved in this paper is revealed.In chapter one, the author firstly gives a detailed explanation of what the aesthetic of reception is and then some important concepts are also proposed. Then, the author makes research about the translation process, especially the relationship between reception aesthetic and translation. At last, the author points out that the activity of translation must be a process of a creative treason.Chapter two can be divided into three parts. In the first part the author puts forward the categories of readership on the basis of analysis of other translator's categories of readership. Then the author makes a brief review about translation history to find the consideration of the readers in Chinese and western traditional translation to prove the necessity of readers consideration. In the end, the thesis analyses the reader's aestheticization psychology including their aesthetic sensation and perception, aesthetic feeling and aesthetic imagination.In Chapter three, under the theory of reception aesthetic, the text firstly chooses several pieces of historical-linguistic context of China—the Late Qing Dynasty, May-Fourth Movement and the twenty-first century. In literary translation, owing to the historical interpretation, the translator's horizon can never be the same as the author's. The readers are not the implied readers of the source text so the horizon of expectation results in translation strategies employed by the translator, therefore, the strategies will definitely change from time to time. Then the author takes the indeterminacy theory as the cornerstone to study translation by means of taking the evolution of three aesthetic paradigms of translation studies as a clue. Following an aesthetic approach to translation process, the paper introduces the original/translated text and translator/reader as aesthetic object and subject respectively. As the aesthetic objects, both the original and translated texts are examined in 3 aspects: sound, form and content, which are analyzed at phonological, semantic and formal levels. The aesthetic properties of sound, form and content will be accompanied with large numbers of examples and illustration.In the last part, the author gets the summarization: on the one hand, due to target readers'active participation in interpreting and constructing the meaning of a translated text, translators should not ignore their target readers but pay sufficient attention to them; on the other hand, translator should not only take into account target readers'preexisting reading habits, but also their demands for absorbing foreign cultural essence, and at the same time, adopt flexible and practicable translation strategies to serve their readers in a better way.