On The Translator’s Subjectivity Through The Comparison Between The Two English Versions Of Shuihuzhuan

Since the appearance of the culture turn in translation, in the Westscholars have gained great ground in the study on the translator’ssubjectivity. In China, the study on it is also flourishing in recent years.Shuihuzhuan, as one of the China’s Four Great Classical Novels, has beentranslated into many languages. Since Pearl S. Buck’s All Men are Brothersand Sidney Shapiro’s Outlaws of the Marsh these English versions came out,articles studying on them have been springing up like mushrooms. Thisthesis studies the translator’s subjectivity in these two versions from theperspective of culture, adopting document analysis method, synthesismethod and classification method. Most of the papers that studying on thesetwo English versions are about which one is more advantageous, from theentry point of foreignization translation and domesticating translation. Itseems that such debates would be endless and would not come to aconclusion clearly. The author will analyze the similarities and differencesbetween these two versions in this thesis, from the three aspects oftranslating strategy, language style and the fidelity degree of culturaltransmission. Because there is relationship closely and naturally amonglanguage, culture and translation, further more, cultural factors play animportant role in the translator’s subjectivity and the translation, the authorwill further interpret the translator’s subjectivity in this thesis from threeangles: translator’s cultural orientation, cultural competence, and culturalattitude.This thesis is formed from five chapters. The first chapter is theintroduction dealing with the objective, the significance and the rationale of this research, summarizing the status of the study on the Pearl S. Buck’s andSidney Shapiro’s English versions of Shuihuzhuan, as well as making ageneral survey of viewpoints on the translator’s subjectivity held byoverseas scholars and domestic scholars in different times, historicallysurveying how the position of the translator has been promoted. The secondchapter is to expound how the cultural factors influence on the translation,as well as explain the contents of the translator’s subjectivity. The thirdchapter deals with some background information of the two translators andtheir English versions of Shuihuzhuan. The fourth and the fifth parts are themain body of this thesis, which discusses the similarities and differencesbetween these two versions mainly in the aspects of translating strategy,language style and the fidelity degree of cultural transmission, and otheraspects, further analyzes the factor of the translator’s subjectivity thatcausing these similarities and differences.Based on the comparative study of these two versions, this thesis pointsout the translator’s subjectivity is a very important factor that woulddetermine whether a translation would be successful or not. What is more, astranslation is a cross-cultural activity, the translator’s cultural orientation,cultural competence and cultural attitude would eventually be thepresentation of the translator’s subjectivity. The author also points out thatthe translator’s subjectivity is not invariable, instead it would be changed asthe time, environment, and society changes. Besides, it is related to thetranslator’s effort closely.