A Study On Allan H.Barr’s English Version Of Di Qi Tian From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

Reception Aesthetics is a literary aesthetic theory put forward by the German Constance School in the 1960 s,and the representatives are Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser.It mainly discusses the position and role of readers’ active acceptance activities in literary communication,and determines the central position of readers.In the following ten years,Reception Aesthetics was widely applied into the field of translation,which greatly promoted the development of translation studies.As an excellent contemporary writer,Yu Hua is one of the representatives of avant-garde writers.After seven years of the publication of Brothers,The Seventh Day is Yu Hua’s latest novel.It was published by New Star Press in June 2013 with0.7 million copies printed for the first time.On April 12,2014,Yu Hua won the 12 th Chinese Literature and Media Award "Writer of the Year" for the work.The only English version of the novel was translated by Sinologist Allan Hepburn Barr.After its publication in the United States in 2015,The Seventh Day is a well-received and has gained international reputation.However,little research is paid to the English translation of Di Qi Tian translated by Allan Hepburn Barr.Based on a detailed comparison between the original text and its English version and Allan Barr’s opinions on translation,the author of the thesis has found that the translator attaches importance to the target readers in the process of translation.This thesis has given an elaborate investigation of English translation of Di Qi Tian translated by Allan Hepburn Barr’s from the perspective of Reception Aesthetics.On the basis of three core concepts of Reception Aesthetics,namely the horizon of expectations,aesthetic distance and indeterminacy,this paper aims at exploring how Allan Hepburn Barr meets the horizon of expectations and deals with the aesthetic distance and indeterminacy.Firstly,with respect to the horizon of expectations,the author of the thesis has analyzed how Allan Hepburn Barr satisfies the target readers’ horizon of expectations from three aspects: rhetoric,vocabularyand syntax.Secondly,in terms of aesthetic distance,Barr adopts the literal translation of some common sayings that are familiar to Chinese readers in the original text to make western readers feel new and create a new aesthetic distance.For those ways of expression that make Chinese readers feel strange,Barr tries his best to maintain the aesthetic distance created by the original author,However,considering the acceptance and understanding ability of the target readers,Barr adopts the free translation for some novel expressions,which shortens the aesthetic distance created by the original author.Thirdly,with respects to indeterminacy,Barr’s translation methods are based upon the receptivity of the target readers by concretizing or leaving the indeterminacy correspondingly.