Translators' Subjectivity In Two Chinese Versions Of Why I Left Goldman Sachs

In the long history of translation activities, people tended to only focus on the translated versions' research, but they paid little attention to the translation subject—translators. In other words, translators were in very low status. After the “Cultural Turn” of translation studies in the west in 1970 s, scholars began to focus on cultural studies. Cultural studies are bound to involve translators' studies. Therefore, translators' subjectivity has received more and more attention.Studies on the translators' subjectivity have been done from a variety of perspectives. This thesis chooses George Steiner's hermeneutics fourfold translation steps as theoretical framework, then compares and analyzes two translated versions of Why I Left Goldman Sachs, to explore how the specific four steps—“Trust”, “Aggression”, “Incorporation” and “Compensation” influence the translated versions. The author also studies how translators' subjectivity influences translated versions.The previous researches on translators' subjectivity only have been limited in the classical literature area, while scholars paid little attention to the research of financial best-selling books. Why I Left Goldman Sachs was written by Greg Smith. He wrote what he had seen and met in Goldman Sachs. Greg also wrote why he left this company. He expressed his admiration for Goldman at first, then how his dream came true, and finally explained why he left the company sadly. In this thesis, the author used George Steiner's fourfold translation steps as theoretical framework, to compares and analyzes the differences between the two translated versions. Representative examples are used to discuss how translators' subjectivity is displayed in two translated versions. Through research, the author found that two translators used different ways of translating details and formed their own characteristics, which caused by their different academic background, personal interest, translation purpose, translation strategy and target readers.