On Translator's Subjective Consciousness In Literary Translation

The translator usually has two roles in the translation theories. In the process of translating, the translator's subjective consciousness is either 'absent' or 'present'. On the one hand, according to most of the traditional translation theories, the translator is a servant and his/her master is the author of the source language text (SLT). His/her subjective consciousness will be 'absent' and the translator should hide himself/herself behind the master. His/her mission is to transfer SLT author's intension, the content and the style of SLT faithfully to the reader of the target language text (TLT). On the other hand, in modern translation theories, many translation theorists put forward that faithfulness to SLT is not the only criterion in translation studies. Translation is a kind of re-creation to the translator and the translator is the subject in the process of translating. For this reason, the translator's subjective consciousness should be 'present'. The present thesis will analyze and discuss the roles of the translator's subjective consciousness in translation in the following three respects. First, in the process of translating, the translator's subjective consciousness gets involved in the literary translation, which exists objectively. Based on the corpus linguistics, the present thesis will make a stylistic analysis of Ezra Pound's Cathay. From corpus investigation, we can find Ezra Pound's style not only in his translation but also in his own poetry creation, which is affected by the act of translating. It turns out in the study that the translator leaves his/her 'finger print' in TLT and we can hear the voice both of the author of SLT and the translator. The translator has his/her own stylistic features in TLT. Therefore translation is re-creation to the translator.Secondly, the process of translating includes SLT's decoding and TLT's coding. The translator acts as the reader of SLT and decodes it according to the translator's source language knowledge and his/her understanding of the source language culture. The Reception Theory suggests that the reader's knowledge background and a text's social history should be taken into consideration in interpreting the text. So different translators should have various comprehensions of the same SLT in decoding. In the process of translating, the translator also acts as the writer of TLT coding TLT. As the go-between in the cultural exchange, the translator must choose the right codes to transferthe culture when he/she is coding TLT. So in the process of translating, it is natural and necessary for the translator to reveal his/her subjective consciousness.Finally, the existence of the translator's subjective consciousness is objective in the process of translating, which makes it possible for the translator to create more and more excellent translation works in the literary translation. In order to have a correct understanding of the intension of SLT's author and the stylistic features of SLT, the translator's subjective consciousness must be 'present' in decoding. The translator's subjective consciousness must be also 'present' in coding so as to effectively convey the information of SLT and reach the aim of the culture exchange. Furthermore, so far as the translator's subjective consciousness is 'present', he/she can act at his/her discretion, take a second thought to avoid the 'absence' of the source language culture and fulfill the culture exchange between these two cultures.