How readers perceive translated literary works: an analysis of reader reception

Abstract - The aim of this paper is to investigate the reader’s reception of translated literary texts and to explore the reader’s expectations about literary works. For this purpose, three comparable corpora of British, American and Italian online book reviews commenting on the English version of Andrea Camilleri’s La forma dell’acqua (The Shape of Water) and on the Italian version of Stephen King’s Joyland were assembled and analysed. The way active target language readers perceive and evaluate a translated literary work was then explored by taking the language they actually used in book recommendation websites. The analysis demonstrates that the Anglo-American and Italian readers’ reception of the translated text is different, in terms of focus and perception.