The Manifestation Of Translators' Subjectivity In Brothers Under The Perspective Of George Steiner's Hermeneutic Motion Theory

In traditional translation studies, the absolute equivalence on linguistic level has been greatly emphasized and translators are required to be absolutely faithful to the original text. Therefore, translators are labeled as "matchmaker""traitor""dancer with bondage"and so on . However, these labels reveal not only characteristics of translation but also the marginalized status of translators in history. As the subject of translation,translator's subjectivity has been neglected for quite a long time. With the establishment of translation studies being an independent discipline, the research on translation shifts from linguistic level to cultural level. The discussion of cultural turn in translation studies makes translator's subjectivity more and more prominent. Consequently, studies on translator's subjectivity has been intensively carried out. Hermeneutics is a philosophic theory concerning the understanding and interpretation of meaning which has an internal and natural relationship with translation. It broadens the horizons and fields for the study of translation and lays theoretical basis for translator's subjectivity at the same time.George Steiner's philosophical hermeneutics divides translation process into four moves:trust, aggression, incorporation and compensation and each step involve the display of translator's subjectivity.Xiongdi is one of Yu Hua's representative novels, which has been claimed as his most satisfied work. This book once set off heat discussion after publication in 2005 and became the best-seller then. Four years later, the English version came into being and won universal praise in the western world. Translation actually is a process involving translator's subjectivity which greatly affects the translation result. To guarantee the success of translation work, translators should give their subjectivity into full play during the process of understanding and interpretation. Translator's subjectivity plays an important role in the success of Brothers but we can barely find a thesis studying the translation of Brothers from the perspective of translator's subjectivity. Previous studies on the translation of Xiongdi mainly focus on skopos theory, equivalence theory and translation of culture-loaded words from pure linguistic level.This paper intends to explore translators' subjectivity in Brothers under the guidance of George Steiner's fourfold hermeneutic motion with the approaches of descriptive research and comparative analysis. The relationship between Hermeneutics and translator's subjectivity is expounded on theoretical basis; the manifestation of translators' subjectivity in Brothers is analyzed with examples from Steiner's fourfold hermeneutic motion. Finally, the exploration of translators' subjectivity in Brothers provides us with some enlightment on Chinese literature going out.It is found that the success of Brothers is inseparable from the exertion of translators' subjectivity in understanding and interpretation of original text which improves the studies on Brothers. This is also a beneficial attempt to integrate hermeneutic motion with translator's subjectivity which provides a new insight into studies on translator's subjectivity. The success of Brothers in the English world offers some enlightment on Chinese literature going out in the following aspects: firstly, the translation mode should be the combination of Chinese and western translators; secondly,the translation materials should possess the characteristic of both nationality and cosmopolitan; thirdly, the translation strategies should balance between the adequacy and acceptability.