A Report On The English-Chinese Translation Of The Netanyahus(Excerpts From Chapters 1-4) From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

This translation practice material is excerpted from the first four chapters of Joshua Cohen’s The Netanyahus,which won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in fiction.The book tells the story of the work and life of Ruben Blum and Benzion Netanyahu in a small town of the United States in the 1960 s.The novel describes the cognitive differences between the two protagonists on their own Jewish identity,and shows the story of identity conflict among American Jews.A great deal of knowledge about Jewish history and culture is presented in the book,which is unfamiliar to Chinese readers.Therefore,the translator combs and studies the knowledge of Jewish history and Jewish culture mentioned in the book.This translation practice adopts reception aesthetics as the guiding theory.This theory takes the readers in the first place and believes that the readers’ reading and acceptance are the process of transforming the text into literary works.On the basis of translation practice,this report discusses and analyzes the difficulties and solutions encountered in the practice from the three core concepts of reception aesthetics: Horizon of Expectation,Response-inviting Structure and Aesthetic Distance.In order to meet the readers’ horizon of expectation,the translator uses domestication and foreignization to guide this translation.The Translator uses free translation and shift to improve the fluency of the translation and meet the readers’ directed expectation;The translator supplements cultural background knowledge by means of division,combination and annotation of proper nouns to meet readers’ creative expectation.For the text blank,the translator chooses addition and interpretation to enrich the characters by filling in the image,semantic and affection.The combination of literal translation and omission enriches the historical background knowledge and shortens the aesthetic distance between the readers and the text.And the translator makes a termbase to sort out and classify the relevant terms in the translation practice,so as to provide some reference for the translation of similar text.