Translator Subjectivity Under The Perspective Of Practical Philosophy To Explore

Translation is a spiritual bridge of communication between the translator and the writer. It witnesses the conflicts and integration between cultures, and shows the dialogue and co-existence of human beings. It also lays the footstone for the development of the target language and culture. For quite a long time, translation as the lingual transformation in the traditional sense had imprisoned itself in "a besieged city", in which "faithfulness" and "equivalence" were rooted as do's and don'ts for the translator. However, the "cultural turn" of translation studies gives us enlightenments to transcend the lingual boundary, and to divert more attention to the cultural world in which translation takes place. Thinking of translation from the cultural aspect, we have found that translation is never a simple reversion to the original meaning, but is imbued with the hybridization, permeation, and counteraction between two cultures. And in a sense, the translating process is essentially the reconstructing process of the textual meaning in a new space-time of culture. Our exploration on the subjectivity weighs anchor under such a context.From the perspective of Practical Philosophy, this thesis points out that study of the translator's subjectivity needs us to go out of the conceptual world as embodied in the theoretical philosophy, and meanwhile to get beyond the sense of subjectivity restricted to the self and self-consciousness of subjective rationality. With reference to the concepts of subject and subjectivity in Marx's Practical Philosophy, we have redefined the subject and the subjectivity of the translator, highlighting the translator as the subject of practice and his/her practicality. The subject of practice is a kind of social and historical existence, because of which the translator possesses his or her sociality and historicity as a subject.Based on the point of the sociality and historicity of the translator as the subject of practice, this thesis, through description and explanation as well as theoretical interpretation and case studies, analyzes and demonstrates the obtrusion of the subject's sociality and historicity in the translating process. It aims at revealing that the translator as a subject of practice is unique, and provides a new definition of the subject without taking the author, reader, the reception context, etc. into consideration, which is because what Marx's practical philosophy stresses is that only human beings can be the subject, and that the subject is the one who takes part in the practice. Meantime, through the interpretation and argumentation of the translator's sociality and historicity in the translating process, the thesis manifests that the translator's subjectivity is not merely the translator's self-determination and self-independence implied in subjective initiative or creativity. The sociality and historicity of the translator have shown that the translating process is inevitably under the influence and restrain of the social and historical reality in which the translator exists. The thesis is concerned with what the translator translates, but otherwise it focuses more attention on what the translator is allowed to translate by his or her sociality and historicity. In the whole process of analysis, the thesis constantly attaches importance to the mutual relation between translating and the translator's sociality and historicity, and examines what is the real background behind the translator's activity, what factors have affected the translator to decide the translating strategies, and what has caused the translator to add, subtract, delete, or change what the source text originally means.This thesis holds that the translating process is a reconstruction process of meaning in which the translator makes his or her sociality and historicity present. The translator's sociality and historicity, on the one hand, can be embodied as the influences of the social and historical reality on the translator's practice, and on the other hand, can be a proof to that the translator's practice will unavoidably be intertwined with the social, historical conditions and ideological motifs of the very society he/she lives in. Obviously, the examination of the translator's sociality and historicity can undoubtedly re-present a social and historical truthfulness of the translator as well as of translating. Translation therefore becomes an epitome of the society and a certain historical stage that the translator resides in. Thus, advocating the full play of the translator's subjectivity requires the translator to obtain a kind of social and historical awareness in the translating process so as to adapt his or her translation to the space-time of the target culture, and it's only in this way that the works of translation can be tested effectively by the society and the history.