A Tentative Study Of Postmodern Translation Theory

Postmodern translation theory,along with postmodernism,emerged in the sixties and seventies of twentieth century.Now it has a comprehensive and thorough influence upon today's Translation Studies.In line with the strategies of anti-essentialism and anti-centrism,postmodern translation theory has deconstructed one after another traditional translational concepts such as fidelity,equivalence,determinacy of meaning,authenticity of original text,and authority of author.Thanks to the deconstruction of postmodern school of thinking,Translation Studies has been liberated from the mere linguistic perspective,and developed toward multi-perspecti'ves,which have brought prosperity of Translation Studies of today.Postmodern translation theory is one of the heated topics today,and it generally includes Hermeneutic School,Deconstructionist School,Manipulative School,Postcolonial School,Feminist School and such schools of Translation Studies.Now each of its sub-schools has made great achievements both at home and abroad.However,it is not difficult,through a careful analysis,to discern that researches on these topics are often confined to a single school,there are only a few integrated ones that pay attention to the connections among these schools.Thanks to this point,what researchers have usually seen about postmodern translation theory are fragments rather than a whole,trees rather than forests.Therefore,this dissertation aims to carry out a macro and systematic perspective to study postmodern translation theory and to draw an outline of it.The whole dissertation is divided into eleven chapters.Chapter One is introduction,which briefly introduces the background of the rise of postmodern school of Translation Studies,the limits of previous researches,and the significance,aim,and methodology of the present research.Chapter Two and Chapter Three are literature review,which not only carry out a detailed analysis of previous literature,but also draw a clear trajectory of the origin and development of each sub-school of postmodern translation study.Chapter Four points out,from four aspects,researchers' prejudices and misunderstandings against postmodern translation theories;and Chapter Five divides the history of Translation Studies into three periods:classic,modernist and postmodernist,and gives a careful analysis of their definitions,scopes,characteristics and interrelationships.Chapter Six to Chapter Nine are the body part of the dissertation.Chapter Six deconstructs the essentialist view of translation with the notion of language game.In this chapter,we not only introduce game theories of postmodernist representatives such as Wittgenstein,Gadamer,Derrida,Foucault,Barthes and Lyotard,but also discuss the language games used by postmodern translation theorists and practitioners.Game is an important concept for postmodernists to deconstruct the essentialism,and regarding translation as a language game is to deconstruct the essentialist view of translation.Chapter Seven uses the notion of transgression to deconstruct the view of binary opposition and centrism in translation.In this chapter,we advocate pluralism and complementation rather than centrism and opposition in translation through discussing four important concepts:fusion of horizons,intertextuality,hybridity and androgyny.Chapter Eight deconstructs the myth of transparency of translation from the perspective of struggle of power.Chapter Nine points out that most of postmodernist translation theorists and practitioners are marginal men,they are secondary and marginal in the structure of binary opposition,that's why they oppose essentialism,opposition and centrism.Chapter Ten carries out a systematic analysis and a careful interpretation of four paradoxes existing in postmodern translation study.These four paradoxes are centrism and anti-centrism,elitism and anti-elitism,encouraging translator's subjectivity and inhibiting translator's subjectivity,and the extension of Translation Studies and the deconstruction of Translation Studies.Reasons for these paradoxes are twofold:researchers' misunderstanding of postmodern translation theories and the lack of consistency of postmodern translation theories themselves.Chapter eleven is the conclusion,in which a brief conclusion of the present study is made and limitations are pointed out.