A Comparative Study Of Two English Versions Of He Tang Yue Se Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

Traditional translation criticism tended to adopt the criteria of faithfulness and equivalence to make a comparison of different versions. Reception Aesthetics, also called Reception Theory, as a new methodology of literary theories, emphasizes that the literary work is an uncompleted, many-layered schematized formation full of blanks and indeterminate places.In the process of prose translation, the beauty of forms of languages as well as the images and emotion of the original should be represented. For any literary works, there is much indeterminacy in the original text which should be concretized by the readers and the translator; and the readers’horizons of expectations should be taken into consideration, then the acceptance of the translated version can be achieved. In this thesis two important concepts in Reception Aesthetics—horizon of expectation and indeterminacy—would be applied to the study. As a case study, the thesis analyzes the two translations of He Tang Yue Se by Yang Xianyi and Howard Goldblatt respectively.As one of the masterpieces of Zhu Ziqing, a notable Chinese writer, He Tang Yue Se has been hailed as one of the greatest prose in modern Chinese literature. It impresses Chinese readers with its language of brevity and great refinement as well as the vivid description of the scenery around the lotus pond under moonlight. In China, much attention has been paid to the study of poetry and fiction translation, while prose translation, either in practice or in theoretical study, has lagged far behind. The theoretical studies concerning prose translation which explore the inner mechanism guiding the translating process are relatively scanty, especially those with unique perspective and systematic framework. On the basis of this fact, this thesis intends to explore the English translation of this Chinese classic from the perspective of Reception Aesthetics and presents a comparative study of two English versions of He Tang Yue Se to further illustrate that Reception Aesthetics provides a new prospect for prose translation practice and offers insightful methods for the general translator. The comparative study of different versions is beneficial to the reproduction of original aesthetic value meeting the taste of the target language reader.