A Comparative Study Of Translator's Subjectivity Reflected In Two Chinese Versions Of Stray Birds From The Perspective Of George Steiner's Hermeneutic Motion Theory

Since the 1970 s,there has been a “cultural turn” in the field of translation,by which translators have turned to the study of social,cultural,political and other aspects behind the text.And this coincides with George Steiner's Hermeneutics.George Steiner combines philosophical Hermeneutics with translation studies and puts forward four movements of translation: trust,aggression,incorporation and compensation.Each of the four movements of reflects the translator's initiative in the process of translation,which provides an effective analytical method for translation studies and promotes the study of the translator's subjectivity in the process of translation.The prose poems of the famous Indian poet Tagore can be said to have influenced the forerunners of Chinese literature.Up to now,Tagore's works have been extensively translated into Chinese and the most famous one is the Stray Birds,which wrote by Tagore in 1913.Since 1920 s,there has been many versions of Stray Birds in China,among which Zheng Zhenduo's version and Feng Tang's version are the most representative.Previous studies have focused on the comparative analysis of the translation of different versions of Stray Birds from a linguistic point of view,however,there are still some deficiencies in the systematic study of the translator from the perspective of subjectivity.This thesis,therefore,based on literature method,case study and comparative method,makes a comparative analysis of the translator's subjectivity in the translation versions of Stray Birds by Zheng Zhenduo and Feng Tang from the four movements of Hermeneutics.Through a comparative study of the two Chinese versions of Stray Birds,this paper finds that Zheng Zhenduo and Feng Tang gave full play to their subjectivity in translating Stray Birds,which can be explained by George Steiner's four movements of Hermeneutics.In the first movement,Zheng Zhenduo's trust is influenced by social-cultural background,while Feng Tang's trust is influenced by the publisher.And both of their trust are influenced by cultural literacy and aesthetic taste,linguisticand cultural competence.In the second movement,the differences between two translators' aggression appears because of the different social backgrounds.In the third movement,Zheng Zhenduo and Feng Tang adopt different strategies to translate Stray Birds in the meaning and form according to their interpretation of the text.In the corporation of meaning,Zheng Zhenduo tends to use foreignization to keep the meaning,which will make her translation more faithful to the original text,whereas Feng Tang is inclined to adopt domestication,making her translation easily understandable to the target readers.In the corporation of form,Zheng Zhenduo faithfully presents the style and appearance of the original.However,Feng Tang believes that the poem should use rhyme.In the fourth movement,in order to maintain the balance between the original text and the target text,both translators“compensate” the translation.In a word,the four movements of George Steiner's Hermeneutics provide a powerful basis for the study of translator's subjectivity.The author hopes that the translator can overcome the cultural barriers and break through the barriers of the times in translation activities in the future and give full play to their subjective initiative.In addition,with the development of the times,new versions emerge one after another,which will inevitably arouse the discussion and concern of translation circles,especially the re-translation of classical works.Therefore,the author suggests that people should combine the social environment,educational background and life experience of the translators in order to analyze the causes,characteristics and development trend of the translation versions when they study the translation in the future.