On The Translator’s Subjectivity And Limitation From The Perspective Of Steiner’s Hermedeutic Motion

Tao Te Ching, as one of the Chinese classic works, has exerted significantinfluence on philosophy, science, politics, religion and so on in the whole world, andattracted a great number of Westerners as well as Chinese scholars to interpret it. Inthe West, the translation of Tao Te Ching is only second to that of Bible. According tothe statistics, Tao Te Ching has been translated into over twenty-eight languages andmore than1,100versions were published.(辛红娟9) Researches into thetranslations of Tao Te Ching appeared shortly after the publishing of the translatedversions.As the present author analyzes and summarizes, such researches can becategorized into three kinds. The first kind is the comments on the language andmeaning of the translations of Tao Te Ching from the perspectives of linguistics,culture and style by analyzing one or more versions, and didn’t expound the reasonswhy differences are caused from the depth of culture. The second kind is the theseswhich intend to make a diachronic and synchronic description of the study on thetranslations of Tao Te Ching, which offer a systematical analysis and conclusion ofthe translations of Tao Te Ching with great value to the translation studies. The thirdkind emerged since “Cultural Turn” occurred, when scholars tried to study from thelinguistic, cultural and stylistic aspects with various new perspectives, and moreemphasis was attached to the translator’s subjectivity, ideology and other socialfactors which would exert influence on the translation, which expanded the methodsand broadened the perspectives of the study on the translations of Tao Te Ching.From then on, scholars began to analyze the versions of Tao Te Ching from thepoint of Hermeneutics. A translator, as one of the main subjects in translating processwith his own subjectivity and initiative, received unprecedented attention.Demonstration on translator’s subjectivity is keeping coming forth. However, onething should be kept in mind. That is the translator, the original author and original text exist in different time and space with various backgrounds, and his language andculture attitude will be restricted and reflected in his translation. With this in mind,the author decides to develop this dissertation to make little contribution to the studyof the English translations of Tao Te Ching by discussing the translator’s subjectivityand limitation in the process of translation from the perspective of Steiner’sHermeneutic Motion.