接受美学视角下《野草》两种英译本的比较分析

A Comparative Analysis of Two English Versions of Wild Grass from the Perspective of Reception Aesthetics

Abstract

Wild Grass was written in 1940 by Xia Yan, when the great Anti-Japanese War was at a stalemate. By praising the seeds, weeds and vitality, the author expressed his contempt for the pressure of the dark reality and the trust of the people’s power, so as to reveal the truth that the power of the masses is invincible. Because of its unique artistic charm, it has been constantly translated by the translators and has produced many excellent versions.

Literary translation in the past emphasized the faithfulness of the translation to the original, neglecting the translator’s subjectivity and the reader’s reception. Reception aesthetics is a textual interpretation theory of modern times, which emphasizes translators priority in interpretation and the subjectivity in the process of translation. It transforms the translation mode from traditional “original text - translation version” to “author - original text - translator - translation version - reader”. So literary translation should not only follow the principles of “faithfulnesss” and “expressiveness”, but also emphasize reader’s reception.

Under the guidance of reception aesthetics, this paper selects the translations of Zhang Peiji and Liu Shicong, makes a comparative analysis of the artistic images and aesthetic effects of wild grass at lexical, syntactic and discourse levels, and discusses their respective translation strategies and methods. It also compares the gains and losses of the two translations from the perspective of reception aesthetics, with an aim to objectively evaluate different translations of the work, and to further clarify the theoretical significance of the application of reception aesthetics to literary translation criticism.

This paper consists of four parts. The first part gives a brief introduction to the author of the original text Wild Grass, its writing background and artistic characteristics, and the two English versions by Zhang Peiji and Liu Shicong respectively. The second part introduces the concept and major notions of reception aesthetics and explores the impact of reception aesthetics on literary translation; it points out that reader’s reception is the principle of the translations. The third part analyzes aesthetic effects and reader’s reception between two English Versions of Wild Grass at the lexical, syntactic and discourse levels; both translations follow the principles of “faithfulnesss” and “expressiveness”, but in terms of reception aesthetics, the two translations produces different artistic images in the selection of words, sentence structure and rhetorical devices. In the last part, it reflects on translation strategies of the two versions; in Zhang’s translation, the language is vivid, and he uses a large number of long sentences to reproduce the form and style of original text, while in terms of shaping the aritistic image of wild grass, the overall image of the whole text is not consistent because the factor of readers are not considered; Liu’s translation forms the interaction with the readers and conveys the unified artistic image of the weeds which are consistent with the original text.

Keywords: Reception Aesthetics; prose translation; Wild Grass