On The Changing Status Of Translator

The issue of translation has long been an endlessly controversial question without a satisfying answer, which has undergone different studying stages such as translatability and untranslatability, literalism and liberalism, author-center, text-center, translator-center and so on. Different theories with different preferences and weaknesses involve endless debates. This thesis tries to deal with it from a blank new angle-translator's status in different translation theory studies and various translating techniques & requirements-to probe into what degree of importance a translator is being attached to and the social culture problem reflected by the changing status of translator.This thesis consists of six parts, each of which focuses on a topic concerning the status of translator. There is a general introduction in the first chapter. The subjects of the second chapter are the origin of translation and certain notions. In Chapter 3, the glorious history of translator in ancient Rome forms a vivid contrast with the miserable position of translator in the Middle Ages translation from religious and civil views of untranslatability, reflecting that the status of translator is going downward to the bottom. The fourth chapter states a status changing from the bottom position in the untranslatability up to the possibility of translator existence from the angle of translatability and then to the slavish period of translator in author-centralized translation as well as in text-centralized translation through analyzing different translation theories and translation requirements. The elevation of translator in translator-centre theories is discussed in Chapter 5. The final chapter represents certain reflections on the changing status of translator.This thesis unfolds a struggling history of translator for a legally professional status. The changing status reflects not only the trend of globalization of the world and the uprising of the third-world countries, but also a changing attitude to translation as well as a shift of translation subjectivity and studies, thus establish the importance of the status of the translator as well as its legalization, further the translation studies to a deeper level and enlarge the scope of translation studies.