Translator' Subjectivity In Six Chapters Of A Floating Life: A Perspective From Hermeneutic Theory

The book Fu Sheng Liu Ji (translated as Six Chapters of a Floating Life) was written by Shen Fu,a literary person in the Qing Dynasty.It is an autobiographic story, mainly dealing with daily trifles,the jocosities and distress between husband and wife,the contradiction and conflicts between father and son,and between brothers.Its inornate and natural style of writing makes readers fascinated. Although this autobiographical novel is written in simple classical Chinese, it is of high literary value, and viewed as a great creation covering wide range of social life.Lin's translation of Six Chapters of a Floating Life is regarded as one of his most distinguished and classic translation works. Undoubtedly,Lin's unique life experiences endowed himself with the gift of a good master of two languages and two cultures, and his value was quite in agreement with the original author's, which bridged the remarkable communication between him and Six Chapters of a Floating Life. As far as the achievement of Lin's translation of Six Chapters of a Floating Life concerned, we can discover that it is Lin's subjectivity that plays a vital role.Traditional translation theories claim that the author of the source text is authoritative,while the translator is only in a subordinate position.The translator has to be faithful or loyal to the source text,serving both the author and the reader.With the cultural turn in translation studies , contemporary translation theories such as hermeneutics,feminist translation theory and deconstructionist translation theory, believe that no matter how hard the translator may try to hide himself, to make himself invisible,his world outlook, values,life experiences, personalities and culture background will unavoidably acts an important character in his translation.In other words,the subjectivity of translator definitely exists in translation process.This thesis makes a research on translator's subjectivity reflected in Lin Yutang's English version of Six Chapters of a Floating Life from the perspective of Hermeneutic theories, especially Steiner's motion theory, and to highlight the influence and function of a translator. The combination of translation theory with hermeneutics will undoubtedly broaden the research field and give us some new enlightenments.