Literary Translation In The Perspective Of Hermeneutics

With increasing literary exchange among different nations, translation has become an indispensable bridge for cultural exchange. Excellent literary works would undoubtedly be translated repeatedly, and excellent translation will certainly give literary texts a second life. That is to say, to ensure that a literary work has artistic life in a worldwide sense, it is inevitable to be transmitted by this intermediary -translation. The translation techniques are manifold, but the ultimate goal is just one, that is, to help translator to do the translation very efficiently. Translator should represent the symbol and meaning of the original exactly. However, translation is always "no perfect version, only better versions". Literature is an art of modeling the image and reflecting the life by language. For literary text, what we are interested in is not only its literary grace but also the thoughts conveyed in the text. A translator is not only a person to transform the linguistics but also a decoder of the culture. As translation developing up to the present, Chinese modern translation theory is no longer only confined to the three principles of "faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance". The translator begins to absorb modern western translation theories; hermeneutics is one of them. It is well known that no translations can exist without the understanding and interpretation of the original; therefore, the significant meaning for translation by hermeneutics is obviously seen in translation studies. Hermeneutics is a general theory on the process of understanding and cognition for the object (text) by the subject. Hermeneutics, at first, is the art of interpretation. The intersection of translation and philosophy has been developed and popular for a long time. The ancient philologists started to use "translation" and "interpretation" to define hermeneutics. Hermeneutic translation, in a sense, is to integrate the knowledge in the text that the readers do not know into the translation without any annotation, namely, converting implicitness into explicitness. The meanings of hermeneutic translation endowed by different periods are different despite its long development history. However, the literary translation in the perspective of hermeneutics puts emphasis on the understanding and interpretation with historicity and multiplicity of the text by translator from the aspect of cross-culture. In literary translation, translators, based on pre-understanding, represent the aesthetic charm of the original by following some translating principles and understanding the thoughts and implications of the original.There is no so-called real translation or "perfect" translation. A hermeneutic study of literary translation helps us to gain a better understanding of the identity of a literary translator, of the nature, the translation standard and the complicated hermeneutic process of literary translation. The translatability and untranslatability of text has been always a perennial subject of argument in translation studies. Hermeneutic translation theory precisely directed against untranslatability and attempted to develop translation studies by the purpose of cultural diffusion. Taking the theories of hermeneutic schools as its theoretical framework, this thesis will point out the multi-understanding of the texts, hoping that such an analysis may throw some light on or offer certain implications and reflection for translation theoretical study and translation practice. This dissertation is divided into six chapters. Chapter One will sum up the interrelationship between hermeneutics and literary translation; Chapter Two will introduce the development of hermeneutics; Chapter Three will analyze the necessity of hermeneutic theory in literary translation; Chapter Four will describe two expressive forms of hermeneutic translation; Chapter Five will try to propose three procedures of literary translation; and the last chapter will focus on the development of hermeneutic theory and its limitation. This dissertation will make a concrete analysis and discussion on literary text and translation in the perspective of hermeneutics.