A Study Of Translator’s Subjectivity In The Chinese Translation Of Hamlet From The Perspective Of George Steiner’s Hermeneutic Motion Theory

Since the "Cultural Turn" in1970s, translation studies have been experiencing a shift from language to culture and human beings in the past decades, realizing a leap-forward development from focus on the object of translation to the subject-the translator, from one-facet to multi-facet approach, which thus positions studies on translators in a crucial status. The translator is playing an indispensable and irreplaceable role in this inter-lingual and inter-cultural communication and translator’s subjectivity is omnipresent in every stage of the translation process, including the source text selection, the perception and understanding of the meaning in the original, and the implementation of translation strategies to reconstruct and recreate source text, etc. Owing to the translator’s creative labor, not only reader’s horizons are broadened and target language and culture are enriched greatly, but numerous literary masterpieces have been widely read, and even endowed with new artistic and aesthetic values. The recognition of the pivotal role of the translator in translation activities has brought the translator into spotlight from an invisible servant to a visible subject.Based on the fourfold Hermeneutic Motion Theory proposed by George Steiner, this thesis makes a tentative endeavor in embodying the abstract concept of translator’s subjectivity into the four concrete steps of "trust","aggression","incorporation" and "compensation" in the case study of two Chinese translated versions of Hamlet. The study aims at obtaining scientific cognition on how translator’s subjectivity exerts influence in every motion of Chinese translation of Hamlet, thereby affirming the existence and significance of translator’s subjectivity in the whole course of translation and contributing to the study on translation of Hamlet that is rarely approached from the domain of translator’s subjectivity.The thesis first traces the changes of translator’s status from obscurity to recognition and combs foregoing studies on translator’s subjectivity at home and abroad, focusing on the elaboration of the philosophical origin, denotation and connotation of the two pairs of concepts, namely subject and subjectivity, the subject of translation and subjectivity of translator, and more importantly, the display of translator’s subjectivity in translation activities. As the backbone of theoretical analysis, the next section of the thesis is first devoted to reviewing the origin and development of hermeneutics and its enlightenment to translation studies and then exploring what the four-beat hermeneutic motion refers to and how translator’s subjectivity displays itself in the four moves. At last comes the possible contribution of the thesis. This thesis attempts to unveil the manifestations of translator’s subjectivity, in terms of Steiner’s four motions that are subdivided into eight respects, in Zhu Shenghao’s and Liang Shiqiu’s translated versions of Hamlet. The thesis is developed with an integration of the theory and specific practices, which can be seen as a beneficial attempt in expanding the perspectives of study on translator’s subjectivity and enriching the dimension of research on Chinese translation of Hamlet.