Norms And Translator’s Subjectivity-with Comments On Lin Shu’s Translation

Lin Shu is one of China’ s most influential translators in Late Qingperiod. He translated altogether about 180 western novels into flowingclassical Chinese. Lin Shu’ s translation has been arousing concernsabroad and at home because of its tremendous quantity and its greatinfluence. Nevertheless, Lin Shu adopted free translation strategy,addition, deletion, alteration everywhere in his translation. What’ s more,he had no idea about foreign language. Many translators and scholars,from the perspective of traditional linguistics, often criticized that histranslation was unfaithful to the originals, and the subjectivity should bedecreased in the translation process.In 1970s, the shift in translation studies to a target-text-orientedapproach starts to emphasize on the importance of translator’ ssubjectivity. Gideon Toury’ s target-oriented descriptive translation normtheory gives a systematical analysis on translator’ s subjectivity andrestrains. The interaction between translator’ s subjectivity andtranslation norms in target cultural system offers new perspectives for usto understand Lin Shu’ s particular translation activity, which has hugesignificance to subjectivity studies.This paper includes six parts.Part 1 is an introduction, which explains the academic tendency ofcurrent translation study, the goal and structure of this paper.Chapter 1 is a brief literature review of comments and studies aboutLin Shu. His translation was badly attacked as lack of faithfulness to theoriginals and being characteristic of incorrect changes. What’ s more, histranslation was condemned for his support of the Qing monarchy and his conservative attitude to the New Culture Movement as well.Chapter 2 reviews the historical development of the translator’ssubjectivity, and offers a reposition of the translator’ s performance,namely his roles in the translation process.In Chapter 3 the discussion focuses on a systematical analysis ontranslator’ s subjectivity and constrains by translation norms during thetarget-oriented stage. Gideon Toury developed the term“norm”into atarget-oriented descriptive translation theory to guide translation study,getting rid of the superficial comparative reading between the originaland the translation. As norms in nature are historical and social, it is verypractical to explain all kinds of the translator’ s subjective choices in thetranslation process by taking the very social and historical culture intoconsideration.Chapter 4 offers a detailed descriptive analysis of examples fromLin Shu’ s translation to observe the influences by norms on thetranslator in a certain translation process. Guided by Toury’ scategorization of Norms，this chapter probes into it in the followingthree aspects：initial norms，preliminary norms，operational norms. Thefirst two norms are on a macro level to examine the contemporaryhistorical and social background, determining the acceptability of thetranslation and the choices of the source text. Operational norms are on amicro level to illustrate the influence of the factor behind translator’ sdifferent strategies in translation, like addition, deletion, and alteration.We find that some are determined by his preference to classical Chinese,some are under the political and social concern, and some are submittedto the readers’ taste and expectance.The last part draws a conclusion. Following the approach of norms, we conclude that Lin Shu’ s translation play a connecting role in Chineseliterature by conforming to or violating the contemporary translationnorms. Under a peculiar historic and social background, this particulartranslating activity is a result of the interaction between norms andtranslator’ s subjectivity. Meanwhile, we should take the limitation ofdescriptive approach, which is widely used in translation studies atpresent, into a deeper consideration.