Modern Chinese Prose Translation From The Perspective Of Reader Response Theory

Juxtaposed with novel, poetry, and drama, the Chinese modern prose is a kind ofbelletristic style with a rich fruit produced by Chinese people in the process ofrecognizimg and perceiving the world. Chinese prose acts as a medium for people tocomprehend the world and has played a significant part in the cultural exchange in theworld. With the development of cultural exchange amongst countries and theincreasing influence of Chinese culture on the world, more and more importance hasbeen attached to the translation of Chinese modern prose. Lots of scholars intranslation fields have also been engaged in this wave and succeeded in bringingabout fruitful achievements. This thesis aims at studying the modern Chinese prosetranslation from the perspective of the target readers’ response by using the Englishversions of He Tang Yue Se as a case study, and in order to find out the main factorswhich affect the target language expression and choice of translation strategy in theprocess of prose translation, as well as the corresponding translating strategies.He Tang Yue Se is one kind of the classic prose written in plain words by thenoted Chinese writer Zhu Ziqing in1920s. The title of this prose literally means thebeautiful scenery over the lotus pond full of lotus flowers under the moonlight. Withits aesthetic beauty, this prose has attracted numerous readers as well as manytranslators at home and abroad. The two English versions chosen and adopted in thisthesis are translated by Zhu Chunshen, and Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang respectivelyWith such awareness in mind, the author of this thesis employs Nida’s reader-response theory from the perspective of style and aesthetics to probe into thestatus and influence of target readers in modern prose translation practice. The authortries to take the target reader’s response and acceptability into full consideration,suitably adjust the prose translating strategies according to target reader’s differentresponse, so as to make target readers successfully appreciate and grasp the charm andartistic conception of original text and enjoy themselves in reading the translatedprose version.Through the detailed comparative analysis of the two English versions of HeTang Yue Se, the author of this thesis has proved the feasibility of reader-responsetheory in the translation of modern Chinese prose and also has found out that in theprocess of modern Chinese prose translation, the dominant factors which influence thetranslator’s choice of linguistic expressions and translation strategies are the followingthree aspects:1) linguistic features of the original text;2) the target reader’s languagehabits, comprehensive abilities and aesthetic conceptions;3) reader’s expectation. It isstill hoped that this study more or less can make some contributions to the futureresearch on modern Chinese prose translation.