| As one of the most important works of the Chinese novelist Yu Hua,To Live was welcomed by Chinese and foreign readers since its publication in 1993.The novel To Live is a story about a person’s whole life in the special background period from the civil war to the Cultural Revolution in China.The protagonist in the novel To Live experienced the ups and downs of life,he experienced the change of life from affluence to extreme poverty.He not only suffered from the poor living conditions but also suffered from the death of all his beloved ones in his life.However,he hold a positive attitude toward life,and it was shown vividly to readers in the novel.The author of this novel was inspired by an American folk song Old Black Joe.Joe’s positive attitude toward his miserable life impressed Yu Hua.And then in 1992,he started to write this novel.The protagonist of this novel has the same personality as Joe,he is a happy-go-lucky guy.The novel,which depicts the positive attitude toward the world after one suffers great pain in life was published in 1993.To Live won many awards after its publication,and till now this famous Chinese novel has been translated into seven languages.In 2003,the English version of To Live,which was translated by Michael Berry,a professor at the University of California,Santa Barbara,was published by Random House in American.The English translation of this novel has also attracted wide attention of Western sinologists and domestic translation scholars.Michael Berry who mainly researches on contemporary Chinese literature,film,popular literature and translation,started to translate To Live in 1996.He not only respects the source text,the Chinese cultural elements contained in the source text,but also tries best to make the English translation readable for the target readers.Michael Berry’s consideration of the readers’ ability and level of acceptance during translation is consistent with the concepts of reception aesthetics theory.Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser proposed reception aesthetics theory in 1960 s.At the beginning of its proposal,it works as a literary critical theory.As time passed by,language learners started to apply this theory in translation studies,and used it to direct translation practice.Thus this literary critical theory has gradually evolved into a translation theory.Under the direction of Reception Aesthetics Theory,the focus of translation studies has changed.The criterion for evaluating the quality of translation is no longer just the equivalence between the original text and the translation.The emphasis changed from the source text,the author of the source text to the receivers of the target text.And,the evaluation of translation work depends on the target readers’ reaction,whether they can accept and appreciate the translated work well or not.The success of the Englishtranslation of such a Chinese novel which contains a lot of Chinese elements concerned with the specific historical background is a demonstration of Michael Berry’s excellent translation skills.In this paper,the author will take the English version of To Live,which was translated by Michael Berry as the text for analysis,and adopt the main concepts in Reception Aesthetics Theory such as “horizon of expectation”and “indeterminacy” as the theoretical basis.This thesis collects twenty-four typical Chinese-English comparison translation instances,analyzes the translation methods adopted by Michael Berry.The study finds out that Michael Berry has profound understanding of To Live before he started to translate it.He adopted flexible translation methods to make his translation more in line with target readers’ language competence.He explained the content of the original text which may cause the target reader’s misunderstanding in his translation.It is the reason why this work can be widely accepted by target readers from different cultural backgrounds.At the same time,he also retained the necessary Chinese elements in his translation so that it could realize the mission of cultural dissemination.This research proves that the success of the English translation of To Live is closely related to Michael Berry’s excellent translation skills based on his consideration of target reader’s horizon of expectation and acceptance level.His English translation not only conforms to the target reader’s language habits,but also transforms the character images and Chinese culture in the original work vividly. |
