Study On The Translator's Subjectivity

This thesis is motivated by a strong impulse to make a more systematic and comprehensive study on the theory of the translator's subjectivity, presenting the essential elements related to the translator's subjectivity during translation and various supporting theories. Though the development of traditional translation studies were linear, translation researches after the cultural turn means the study of translation at the interface with culture, looking at translation from the cultural angle, taking translation studies away from linguistic analysis, and bringing it into contact with other disciplines. As for the theory of the translator's subjectivity, though it is rather new, many scholars have done researches on this theory from various perspectives. Whether manipulation school, skopos theory, hermeneutic approaches, school of translation studies or postmodernist theories such as deconstructionism, feminism and postcolonialism, they all have close relations with the translator's subjectivity. With the studies in this field going on from so many perspectives, a systematic investigation into the theory becomes an urgent necessity and the project of this thesis is an attempt to clear up the theory in a more comprehensive and systematical way.The first chapter of the thesis probes into the historical root of the translator's subjectivity in translation activities. The translator's subjectivity has not been invisible or marginalized all the time in the way some scholars put it. In the history of translation in both China and Western countries, the translator's role has been now visible now hidden. And the translator's subjectivity does influence the whole translation process and is often perceptible in the target texts. As a new theory, it has its own historical root.Some essential factors related to the translator's subjectivity affecting the translation activity have been proposed in the second chapter of this thesis, including the ideology of the translator and of his time, his translation goal, his understanding of the source texts as well as his personal abilities. Except for the last element, each is backed up by one or more theories. What's more, many contemporary theories mentioned above also defend the Theory of the Translator's Subjectivity, which further demonstrated the validity of this Theory.Later in the third chapter of this thesis, a case study is carried out following the factors given above to justify the interpretation of the theory in translation practice. Ezra Pound, influential and innovative not only as a poet, but also as a translator, editor, critic, and essayist, translated many Chinese ancient poems, in particular Cathay and Confucian classics. The ideological influence on his translations, his efforts in realizing his translation goal, his unique understanding of the source texts, or his choice of source texts and translation strategies, each of these elements showing the translator's subjectivity is manifested in Ezra Pound's translations, which can be completely justified though having given rise to heated controversy.