The Notion And Embodiments Of The Translator's Subjectivity: A Relevance-theoretic Exposition

The translator's subjectivity, an essential part of translation study (TS). is not adequately researched in the traditional text-based TS. Since the 1970s, with the "cultural turn" in translation and "linguistic turn"' in philosophy, the translator's central status in TS has been rediscovered. This leads to the widening and deepening researches in the translator's subjectivity. However, these researches have their own weak points. First, there are endless debates on the subject matter for lack of a unified theoretic framework; second, the domain of these researches is restricted to the constraint of external factors, such as text, society and culture; third, methodologically, these researches belong to static studies rather than dynamic ones. In particular, the notion and embodiments of the translator's subjectivity have not been given systematically explanatory studies but the prescriptive or descriptive ones.Given the defects of these previous researches, this study aims to interpret the notion and embodiments of the translator's subjectivity in the relevance-theoretic framework proposed by D. Sperber and D.Wilson in their masterpiece Relevance: Communication and Cognition (1986/1995). This thesis consists of seven parts as follows.In the first part, the author of this thesis points out that translation has played a vital part in the interlinguistic and intercultural communication since the ancient times, and that translation study is, however, far from satisfactory for it is still in its cradle. In particular, there are fewer systematic researches in the notion and embodiments of the translator's subjectivity. Therefore, there is an urgent need to do some systematic research in the notion and embodiments of the translator's subjectivity, (see introduction)The brief historical overview of the study of the translator's subjectivity coversthe second part of the thesis, (see chapter one) Similar to the research in the principle of subjectivity in the philosophical history, the translator's subjectivity has been studied in a zigzag course which can be divided into three periods: the philological period, the structural linguistic period and the deconstructive period. In the first period, the studies of the translator's subjectivity crown a mystical color for lack of guidance of a systematic theory or a given principle. In contrast with the first period, the second period witnesses a one-sided and mechanical picture in the perspective of linguistic-analysis-centered code model. It is in the third period that interdisplinary studies (mainly the literal-linguistic approach and the cultural-philosophical approach) of the subject matter are booming although some defects exist in these researches. In order to do a dynamic and systematic research on the notion and embodiments of the translator's subjectivity, the author finally proclaims that a relevance-theoretic approach is a feasible one to the subject matter.The third part is a brief introduction to relevance theory (RT).(see chapter two) Based on J.A. Fodor's cognitive theory and Gricean theory, D. Sperber and D. Wilson (1986/1995) propose relevance theory. Some key terms such as non-demonstrative inference, cognitive environment, relevance and the principle of relevance are illustrated in this part. The principle of relevance in terms of cognitive effect and processing effort falls into two distinctive but closely related principles: the cognitive principle and the communicative principle. The cognitive principle indicates that every individual is geared to achieving maximal cognitive effect by minimal processing effort. The communicative principle shows that every ostensive behavior is presumed as optimal relevance, i.e. practically, the addressee achieves enough cognitive effect by his non-gratuitous effort. Relevance theory proves powerful in accounting for communication and cognition.The feasibility of applying a relevance-theoretic approach to the translator's subjectivity is discussed in the fourth part, (see chapter three) A vast amount of researches p...