A Comparative Study On The Four Chinese Re-translation Versions Of The Age Of Innocence From The Perspective Of Reception Theory

The Age of Innocence is an important representative work of American female writer Edith Walton,which has caused great repercussions in society since its publication and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1921.This paper places the Chinese translation of this English work under the perspective of reception theory,comparing and analyzing four Chinese translations of The Age of Innocence from the perspectives of the horizon of expectation and the indeterminacy and vacancy,exploring whether the different translation versions fit with different readers’ horizons of expectation,as well as the influence of the treatment of vacancy and indeterminacy on the style of the translation.The author of this research employs a questionnaire about Chinese readers’ expectations of Chinese translations of foreign novels in four areas: aesthetic,cultural,formal indeterminacy and vacancy and emotional indeterminacy and vacancy,Based on the results of the survey,this paper uses the comparative analysis method to assess whether and to what extent the four translations of Wu Qiyao,Wang Jiaxiang & Wang Lili,Zhao Xingguo &Zhao Ling,and Zhou Xiaoxin meet target readers’ expectations on the basis of maintaining the style of the source text.Through comparative analysis,the findings are the following: 1.Translators should have an in-depth understanding of the history and culture of the source language before the translation practice,so that the translator can better understand the source text,thus achieving an accurate translation of the source text;2.Translators should have a reader-oriented view to meet the expectations of target readers and pay more attention to narrowing the cultural barriers between target language readers and source language readers to achieve the integration of horizons;3.Doing a good translation strategy of dealing with indeterminacy and vacancy,focusing on the beauty of literary language,and compensating appropriately for textual gaps,can effectively prevent readers from being confused during their reading process.