An English-Chinese Translation Report Of The Hothouse

Harold Pinter,the winner of Nobel Prize in Literature in 2005,is a famous modern British dramatist.The style of his works is unique,which is famous for its absurdity.So people call it “Pintersque”.This translation practice report is based on the translation practice of Pinter's drama,the Hothouse.The story of the Hothouse occurs in a “sanitarium”,which is like a jail for serious bureaucracy and messed management of Roote,the president of the satitarium.One patient of number 6459 is dead and another patient of number 6457 is pregnant,and the absurdity is that Roote,as the president of the hospital knows nothing about it.In order to find out the murderer,the whole play is in an atmosphere of threaten and finally a staff called Lamb who is kind and innocent is accused to be the murderer.The absurdity style is obvious in the whole play of the Hothouse.As a theory of literary critic,it focuses on reader rather than author.Reception Aesthetics was emerged in Germany in the 1960 s,its representatives are Hans Jauss and Wolfgang Iser and they proposed some important notions based on Phenomenology and Hermeneutics: horizon of expectation,fusion of horizon,indeterminacy and aesthetic distance.In the early 1990 s,scholars began to explore how to combine Reception Aesthetics theory and translation studies,they put the key notions of Reception Aesthetics into translation,for example: horizon of expectation,fusion of horizon and so on.It not only stresses translator's active process but also the reader-oriented translation.This report includes five chapters: introduction;pre-translation preparation process;reception aesthetics;case analysis and summary.The first chapter introduces the background of the report and the significance of the report.Chapter two gives the analysis of features of the source text and search of the parallel text and reference books.Chapter three mainly introduces the origin of Reception Aesthetics;theoretical basis and the key notions of Reception Aesthetics.Chapter four gives examples to analyze how to combine the theory of reception aesthetics with the translation of the Hothouse by many translation methods.The fifth chapter mainly elaborates the experience,limitations and reflections on the translation.This translation report is designed to provide valuable reference and help further scholars to be interested in studying the drama translation,and to provide some references for drama translation from the perspective of Reception Aesthetic.