阅读理论与“真实”的读者:浅论20世纪80年代中译小说的接受

Reading Theories and the “Real” Reader: On the Reception of Chinese Translated Fiction in the 1980s

本文介绍了西方过去三四十年间有关'普通读者崛起'的理论。与批评家不同,这些读者处于特定的文化和语言环境中,在特定历史阶段介入文本,因此他们可被视为'真实'的读者。作者以20世纪80年代为例,分析当时读者对翻译小说的两种反应。首先,对后来成为作家的读者(如陈丹燕、王蒙、王小鹰)而言,阅读翻译小说让他们感受至深,使他们走上了创作之路。另外一些读者,则通过购买译本的方式来拥有外国著作,从而获得消费愉悦。重要的是,这个现象证明了译本的价值已经可以等同于原著,也预示了即将来临的疯狂消费主义如何影响着小说的翻译与出版。

This article begins by introducing Western conceptualizations of the "rise of the reader." This reader is the real reader, not the implied or ideal reader to be constructed from a text. With reference to the reception of Chinese translations of Western novels in the 1980 s, the author analyzes two different kinds of readers’ response. While potential fiction-writers were inspired by the translated works they read, many readers simply derived pleasure from the purchases they made, in a way that presages the advent of consumerism that would affect the translation of Western fiction in the decades to come.