A Study Of Umberto Eco’s Translation Poetics Under Philosophical Hermeneutics

Translation poetics devotes to the research and understanding of translation theory from the perspective of philosophy, which takes the meaning, value and significance of interpreted or translated works into consideration. It extends discussion surrounding text, author and reader or any aspect of these three. It has been a long history to combine translation study with hermeneutics. To some extent, translation is essentially the understanding and interpretation of the meaning of text. Therefore, to recognize the nature of text meaning and grasp the objective laws or principles in translating or interpreting process would be a long-term and hard research task for translation theorists.Umberto Eco (1932-) is well-known as an Italian writer, philosopher, aesthetician and literary critic. He makes great contribution to hermeneutics and semiotics, puts himself in the reader’s shoes and writes so many masterpieces, which represents his stance to build a certain balanced relation among "texts","authors" and "readers". He highlights the importance of interpretation while he still worries too much manipulation of over-interpretation. Eco’s academic masterpieces, such as The Open Work, Interpretation and Overinterpretation, The Limits of Interpretation are all featured by their interpretative openness, philosophical dialectics and unique aesthetics, which are of great significance to translation theory and practice.This thesis studies Eco’s translation poetics from the perspective of philosophical hermeneutics. By revealing the essence of translation poetics and hermeneutics, this thesis points out that, based on hermeneutics, Eco’s translation poetics has special historical background, philosophical dimensions and practical effects. Eco is a reader, an interpreter and also a creator. His translation poetics inherits and develops that of Herdegger and Gadamer. The construction of his translation poetics mainly centers on the subjectivity, objectivity and criterion of interpretations, taking the intention of texts, the intention of authors and the intention of readers as research points. It goes without saying that translation is a special activity of interpretation, a creative thinking activity that needs translator’s intelligence and initiatives. A great deal of evidence suggests that under-translation and over-translation could correlate with under-interpretation and over-interpretation in hermeneutics. In a word, the thesis summarizes what Eco’s translation poetics proposes, reveals how they are applied to translation practice and extends concepts of "hermeneutic entropy" and "under-interpretation" to explain the phenomenon of "under-translation" and "over-translation" with comparative analysis. This is also the core and innovation of the thesis.