Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Background of the Study
As a prominent Chinese writer, scholar, foreign literature researcher and translator, Yang Jiang witnessed the significant changes in China and the outside world through the 20th century. Some people know her simply because she is the wife of Qian Zhongshu, the guru of culture studies, however, as a playwright and translator Yang jiang was one of the most well-known female scholars in literati of mainland China. In view of her enormous reputation and significant achievement, People’s Literature Publishing House,one of the most famous national academic literature publishing agencies of PRC, has published the Collected Works of Yang Jiang and Complete Works of Yang Jiang, which are reprinted several times in the great need of readers and researchers of different levels at home and abroad.
Xizao (The title of the novel’s English translation—Baptism) is the only novel of Yang Jiang, which depicts the life situation of Chinese intellectuals in the first mass campaigns after the founding of People’s Republic of China in 1949. It is usually compared with The City Besieged by her husband Qian Zhongshu, which is another widely known novel about the destiny of Chinese intellectuals in historic changes before 1949. As her only novel plus the fact that her literary works concentrate mainly on prose, drama and translation, Xizao has attracted extensive attention since it was published in 1988 in both academic field and readers nationwide. Especially with the nation’s policy of opening to the outside world and people’s special attention to the fate of intellectuals during the social upheavals, more and more readers and researchers overseas turn their attention to this novel. It was firstly published into English by Hong Kong University Press and then People’s Literature Publishing House, both in 2007, the year of 10th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to China. Although Yang Jiang’s passing away in 2016 put an end to the centenarian’s witness to the social and political changes of China and the world, the study and research on the novel and its translation has never stopped.
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1.2 Significance of the Study
Traditionally, translation of literary works is studied according to the fidelity and equivalence compared with the original context. In other words, the intention of the source text’s author is settled since the complete of the literary work. The process of translation is only to express the settled intention of the source text’s author with words pragmatically equivalent to the source language. While in the light of aesthetics of reception theory, the meaning of literary works is not fixed, but is waiting for the readers’ discovery and development. Besides, the translator, first of all, as a reader, has his/ her own capacity to develop the source text’s author’s intention. And there are a great many indeterminacies and blanks in the literary works waiting for the translators to expound and interpret to himself and the target readers of the target language.
Based on the aesthetics of reception theory, readers are the center of the aesthetic activity. Emphasis is paid on the target readers of the translation, that is to say, the readers’ reception of the target text is critical in the appreciation of the translation. In consideration of the special value and status, as well as the continuous interest of enormous readers in the novel Xizao, this thesis attempts to analyze and summarize the translation strategies adopted by the translators based on the aesthetics of reception theory. In addition, through the analysis of the examples the author attempts to summarize the suggestions in literary translation based on the aesthetics of reception theory, hoping for introducing a different light for the future translation work.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 Previous Studies on Xizao’s Translation
Xizao is the only novel written by the renowned Chinese woman playwright, essayist and translator Yang Jiang. The novel consists three parts and an epilogue including a sum of 25 Chinese characters, unveiling the life situation of Chinese intellectuals at the early days of new China. The well-known contemporary Chinese writer and literary translator Shi Cunzhe once commented “Xizao is half volume of A Dream in Red Mansions and half volume of The Scholars, which has a great place in the 20th century Chinese literature (Shi Cunzhe, 2004:1).” Undeniably, Xizao is not only a witty and engrossing novel, but a vivid reference to the life of Chinese intellectuals in social political campaigns.
Since its publication in 1988, Yang Jiang’s only novel Xizao was not translated into English until 2004 by Judith M. Amory and Shi Yaohua in USA, who were authorized by Yang Jiang and started their translation project. The English translation was titled as Baptism by the co-translators, and finally the English version was published by two publishers in 2007, one is the People’s Literature Publishing House in Beijing, the other is Hong Kong University Press in Hong Kong.
For lack of information on the translators and statistics on readers’ reception, the previous studies on Xizao’s translation at home mainly focus on the following aspects, such as the embodiment of subjectivity of translators, the reproduction of language style, the choice-making over different translation strategies based on certain translation theoretical framework. The studies abroad, meanwhile, for the most part do not separate the translation with its source text but take the two as a whole and concentrate on the historical context of the story.
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2.2 Previous Studies on Aesthetics of Reception Theory
On the basis of hermeneutics and phenomenology, aesthetics of reception theory originated at the University of Constance in Germany in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser as its representatives. Because of its novel and creative idea that the history of literary works should be seen as “the succession of system (Jauss, 1982)”, in other words, the history of readers’ consumption and comprehension. According to Jauss, readers are the center of reception activity, and the concretization of the meaning of literary context is realized by readers’ filling of blanks and indeterminacies in it, from which the literary work is constructed as a whole unit. The other prominent co-founder, Wolfgang Iser, influenced by Ingarden’s phenomenology, paid special attention to the concrete aesthetic response of readers in the process of reading. According to him, the appeal structure of the literary context invites readers to get involved into the reading process, in the meantime, readers are guided by the implied reader of the text so as to actualize the potential meaning of the work.
Since its appearance, the aesthetics of reception theory has attracted much attention to the literature study and led to the reader-centered historical change in the study of history of literature works. Its influence has touched different field in the western world, such as literature criticism, theology, art, translation and etc. In the following sections, studies of aesthetics of reception theory at home and abroad will be analyzed.
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Chapter 3 Theoretical Framework ............................. 11
3.1 Reception Theory ............................ 11
3.1.1 Horizon of Expectations .................... 12
3.1.2 Indeterminacy, Blank and Negation ................................. 13
Chapter 4 Analysis on the Translation of Xizao from the Perspective of Aesthetics of Reception Theory ........................... 17
4.1 Introduction to Xizao’s Translation and Its Translators ...................... 17
4.2 Analysis on Xizao’s Translation in Terms of Intra-linguistic Horizon .......................... 19
Chapter 5 Conclusion .............................. 41
5.1 Major Findings of the Study ................................. 41
5.2 Limitations and Suggestions for Further Study ...................... 43
Chapter 4 Analysis on the Translation of Xizao from the Perspective of Aesthetics of Reception Theory
4.1 Introduction to Xizao’s Translation and Its Translators
Reception theory, as a prevalent literary criticism, has a strong explanatory power to the interpretation of literary works and the aesthetic experience of readers. The translator, as the subject of translation activity and the first reader of the source text of the literary output, plays a critical role in the process of reception of the work. This chapter will interpret and analyze how Judith M. Amory and Shi Yaohua’s Baptism manifests the implied reader, horizon of expectation and indeterminacies in their translation.
The implied reader, which “embodies all those predispositions necessary for a literary work to exercise its effect—predispositions laid down, not by an empirical outside reality but by the text itself (Iser, 1978:34)”. In other words, it refers to a possible reader, who is able to keep in line with the appeal structure of the text and realize the potential meaning of the text in his reception. Therefore, the translator, in their preparation before translation and translation process, should attempt to narrow the gap between their horizon of expectations and the horizon of the author of the source text.
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Chapter 5 Conclusion
5.1 Major Findings of the Study
domestication translation to guarantee the acceptability of the aesthetic distance between the target reader and the translated version.
reference(omitted)