Translator’s Subjectivity From Philosophical Hermeneutics

Translation is essentially the transmission of the information, the meanings and the ideas of the source text, and plays a significant part in the exchanges of different cultures throughout the world. Accordingly, the translator, as the subject of this activity as well as the disseminator of different cultures, can not be neglected. However, for a long time, whether in China or in the West, the status of the translator was marginalized and the translator was ignored. It is not until in the1970s, when the "cultural turn" in the western translation studies appeared, that the importance of the translator has been recognized, and since then the subjectivity of the translator has been gradually brought into agenda..Hermeneutics, which became popular as a trend of philosophical and cultural thought in the West in the1960s, is a kind of theory exploring the comprehension as well as the expression of the meanings. Hermeneutics holds that the translator is not the passive receiptor of the original text but the active creator of the target text, which confirms the subjectivity of the translator. Hermeneutics not only widens the range of the translation studies, but also enables people to acquire a correct comprehension of the translator, thus providing a firm theoretical framework for the study of the translator’s subjectivity. The historicity of understanding and the fusion of horizons are two principles of Gadamar’s hermeneutics, and the in-depth comprehension and analysis of them will be conductive to study the subjectivity of the translator.Marcus Aurelius’s The Meditations is a milestone of the ancient Stoicism, which leaves behind huge spiritual treasure for the later world and makes great contribution to the philosophical field. Though it has been translated into various languages and become quite popular throughout the world, researches on it from the angel of translation are rare. So this thesis can be regarded as a breakthrough.The Meditations, translated by Liang Shiqiu, is selected as the case study to illustrate how the translator’s subjectivity is presented under the guidance of Gadamar’s two principles, namely, the historicity of understanding and the "fusion of horizons". The translator’s subjectivity in historic understanding is manifested in unconscious misreading and conscious misreading, while the subjectivity of the translator in the "fusion of horizons" and cultural filtration can be justified easily from syntax, figure of speech, and linguistic level, cultural level respectively.