A Study Of Frankenstein’s Translation From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

In response to the trend of cultural globalization,China is committed to enhancing its own cultural values while strongly advocating the introduction of outstanding culture.As a cultural carrier,classical literature carries a rich cultural connotation and is of great value for translation.Meanwhile,technology is developing rapidly and its influence is gradually being integrated into various fields.In terms of literature,the use of science fiction elements has become a major trend in creation,and as a result,the influence of science fiction literature is growing.To sum up,the author has chosen the original English edition and Chinese translation of Frankenstein,the first science fiction novel,as the research corpus.As a pioneer of science fiction,Frankenstein has deep literary value and is highly acclaimed.After a thorough analysis of the text,the author finds that the novel’s multiple narrative perspectives and the interweaving of Gothic and science fiction elements pose a major challenge for readers to accept and understand the original text.In the process of cultural introduction,the degree of acceptance by the cultural receivers,that is,the readers,is of great importance.Therefore,the author chooses to analyze the acceptance of the Chinese readers by means of reader-centered reception aesthetics.The theory of reception aesthetics breaks with the traditional author-centered model and forms a reader-centered model.The theory was proposed by the German theorists of The Konstanz School,Jauss and Iser,and its core ideas are the Horizon of Expectation and the Appealing Structure,respectively.The Horizon of Expectation refers to the orientation or prior structure of the reader’s literary reading experience when reading a work.The Appealing Structure is composed of “blank”,“vacancy” and “negation”,which are the most fundamental structural features of literary texts and one of the basic prerequisites for readers’ re-creation activities.Based on the theory of Reception Aesthetics,the thesis uses the original English version and the Chinese translation of Frankenstein as the corpus.Through the methods of literature research,inductive-deductive and case analysis,the author analyses the translation strategies and methods adopted by the translator to meet the expectations of the readers of the translated text and to complete the appealing structure of the text at five strata,including the phonetic and intonation stratum,the semantic stratum,the rhetorical stratum,the stratum of image and atmosphere and the stratum of thought and feelings.After analysis,it is found that in order to meet readers’ horizon of expectation and integrate readers’ horizon with textual horizon,translators mainly adopt the translation strategy of domestication,supplemented by literal translation and free translation to fill in the blanks of the works,determine the indeterminacy of the text,and finally realize the re-acceptance of literary works.This thesis will also provide some reference for the Chinese translation of classic literary works.