On Translating Li Qingzhao's Ci-Poems From The Perspective Of Translator's Subjectivity

Song Ci-poetry, which occupies a very important position in the history of classical Chinese literature, has attracted numerous poetry lovers both at home and abroad with its unique artistic flavour. Li Qingzhao is the greatest poetess in the history of Song Ci-poetry and thus the significance and necessity of research on her Ci-poetry and its translations is self-evident.Though the difficulty in poetry translation is universally recognized, many scholars from China and abroad have made great efforts in translating Li Qingzhao's Ci-poems into English, which greatly promotes western world's understanding of classical Chinese literature. For recent 80 years, for sixty pieces of Li Qingzhao's Ci-poems, there have emerged more than 400 English versions, which are perfect materials for analytical comparison of multiple translated versions of a text.Most comparison studies on different English versions of Li Qingzhao's Ci-poetry have been limited to finding the"authorized version"and realizing the aim of"faithfulness"or"equivalence". Translator's subjectivity opens a new horizon and provides a new perspective.In the 1960s, translation studies witnessed the"cultural turn". People began to doubt the reasonability of"source-orientation"and pay more attention to translator as well as his role in the translation process. Translator's subjectivity began to catch the attention of scholars both at home and abroad and thus became one of the hottest topics in translation circle. Concerning several questions of translator's subjectivity, such as"who is the subject of translation"and"what is translator's subjectivity", many scholars have given their own thoughts; however, no consensus has been made until now. Retrospection and discussion of such questions will help us better understand how translator's subjectivity works in the process of translation.Hermeneutics, put forward by Gadamer, is the philosophical basis of translator's subjectivity. With illustrations of the three most important notions of modern philosophical hermeneutics,"historicity of understanding","prejudice", and"fusion of horizons", emphasis is made that translators have different interpretations of the same original text due to their differences in cultural and social background, individual language competence, personal interest, aesthetic taste, etc.. As a result, different translated versions of the same original text come into being.In case study, the thesis utilizes abundant English versions of Li Qingzhao's Ci-poems to analyze the manipulation of translator's subjectivity manifested in three stages of translation. The author makes a full-range selection of English versions to bear enough evidences of the hypothesis: the manipulation of translator's subjectivity is an important factor leading to the existence of multiple translated versions of the same Ci-poem by Li Qingzhao; when comparing different translated versions of a text, critics should probe into the reasons behind the differences with consideration of translators, the most active element of translation, in order to better promote the practice of poetry translation.