A Report On E-C Translation Of Young Adult Literature Last Night At The Telegraph Club (Excerpt) Under The Guidance Of Reception Aesthetics

This is a translation report for an excerpt from the novel Last Night at the Telegraph Club authored by Malinda Lo,a Chinese-American novelist.The novel mainly tells the story about a lesbian Chinese-American girl who explored herself and pursued love in the US,which integrates many popular topics,such as history and politics,race,adolescent growth,and minority groups.Due to the particularity of the target reader,the translation of young adult literature should prioritize the reading demands and preferences of teenagers.Under such circumstances,the author of this paper,takes the two main concepts in Reception Aesthetics: Horizon of Expectation and Text Indeterminacy as the theoretical guidance to translate chapters 3-9 of the novel,so as to perform the text functions,stimulate the reading interest and extend the expectation of target readers.The horizon of expectation refers to the preceding knowledge and aesthetic experience before appreciating literary works,based on which the author understands and translates the original text,satisfies readers’ directed expectation by using colloquial and popular words,simplifying long sentences and fulfills the creative expectation by applying idioms and adding footnotes;The indeterminacy of the text relates to the contents not mentioned or not clearly expressed in the text.The author consciously retains or fills the vacancy of the meaning in the source text according to the acceptability of the target readers and the function of the text.To sum up,this report will discuss the language features and translation problems of the certain literature through case analysis,and figure out corresponding solutions,hoping to offer references to the translation of this kind of literature works.The report is divided into five chapters.The first chapter introduces the translation material;the second describes the translation process;the third chapter expounds on the theory of Reception Aesthetics;the fourth chapter is case study and the last chapter is about summary and limitations of the report.