A C-E Report On Guide Dog Dick(Except)under The Guidance Of Reception Aesthetics Theory

The source text of this C-E translation practice is Guide Dog Dick,one of the representative works of Shen Shixi,an outstanding Chinese writer in the field of children’s literature.In the process of translation,the translator uses Reception Aesthetics Theory as the guiding theory,aiming to create a translation of children’s literature that meets the expectations of the target readers.Up to now,there is no English translation of the source text,so the translator has excerpted two chapters from the book for translation practice.This translation report is theoretically guided by Reception Aesthetics Theory,which was first put forward by Hans Robert Jauss from Germany in the 1960 s.It has stated that literary works are created for the readers,which means readers are the core of literary activity and attention is needed for the readers’ acceptance.Readers are the active subject in literary activities.The three main points of Reception Aesthetics are reader orientation,horizon of expectation,and the indeterminacy and vacancy of the text.These three principles are inspiring for the translator.That is,the translator should pay attention to children’s knowledge and experience,cognitive level and aesthetic level when translating in order to stimulate children’s interest in reading and enhance the readability of the text.A good understanding of the characteristics of the source text is necessary for better translation practice.The source text has vivid language and rich vocabulary,including most reduplicated words,four-character words and cultural-loaded words.Long and compound sentences appear a lot in the text,and the author uses a lot of rhetorical techniques.The text involves many dialogues and perspective shifts.Based on the characteristics of the text and the guide of Reception Aesthetics,the report presents case studies in Chapter 3 from three levels.In terms of vocabulary,using reduplicated words and onomatopoeia and simplifying difficult four-character words can make the translation more readable and interesting,which could meet the reading preferences of children readers.At the syntactic level,the translator uses segmentation and reconstruction to reduce children’s difficulty in reading long and difficult sentences.At the textual level,the translator reorganizes and handles multiple perspective conversions and dialogues to enhance the readability of the text.Translation of children’s literature needs to consider the cognitive level and aesthetic characteristics of child readers.This report aims to show how Reception Aesthetics theory can help translators understand the position of readers in literary activities and has inspired translators to think about translation activities.