Manifestation Of Translator's Subjectivity From The Perspective Of Philosophical Hermeneutics

Tao Te Ching, also called Lao Tzu, is an important philosophical work in pre-Qin times in China. It is also the fundamental work of Taoist School. Tao Te Ching is a classic work featured with profound thoughts and ambiguous language. So its translation has always been the focus of the translators both in and out of China. In the last century, Tao Te Ching was translated and published successively, which made it the most widely translated text except the Bible. As there are numerous original texts and annotations of Tao Te Ching, with its obscure and difficult language, deep and profound thoughts. Also the language and culture in China differ greatly from those in the West, when translating this Chinese classic, different translators will often have their unique understanding and interpretation, fully displaying their subjectivity.In traditional translation studies, the translator has always been in a marginalized cultural status. And usually, he or she is entitled inferior names, such as"servant","painter","woman matchmaker","translation machine"and"dancers on ropes with fettered legs"and so on. As a result, his or her subjective dynamics and creativity have not gained its due recognition. In the 1990s, the translation studies officially took the"cultural turn". With this development, the subjective role that the translator plays in translation is increasingly attached importance to, and the translator's subjectivity has since been recognized. Hermeneutics arises from the west. It is a theory or philosophy concerning the understanding and interpretation of meaning. Hermeneutics at first regards translation as a limited interpretation of the source text, and then a recoding process. Since the translating activity is also concerned with the understanding of the original text, hermeneutics is closely related to translation.From the three nuclear concepts of Gadamer's hermeneutics, the author of this thesis has got three points: translators are historical beings, and when there is the time gap between source text and translation, people should give the translators'dynamics and creativity more understanding; translators make circulate dialogues between the translator and the source text with prejudice, hence the cultural mistranslation is inevitable, and the conscious cultural mistranslation is the manifestation of translator's subjectivity; in the translation process, translator will construct a new horizon by fusing his horizon and that of the source text, and the new horizon must include translator's subjective recognition.