The Translator's Dynamism

The study of translation has reached a new high in this new age featuring cross-cultural communications. Liao Qiyi (2000) made a general survey on five modern translation schools in the western world: the American Translation Workshop, the Science of Translation, Translation Studies, Polysystem and Deconstruction. Among them, the American Translation Workshop and the Science of Translation believe that the translation should be faithful to the source text. The latter bases its belief on the development of modern linguistics. Translation Studies further broadens our visions by erecting culture as a governing factor in translation. Polysystem mainly studies the status of translation in the mainstream culture in different historical periods. Deconstruction concerns the relationship between the source text and the target text. It points out that the target text, the mixture of both the source culture and the target culture, is the improvement of the source text. The general tendency in the study of translation is the study of the dual effect on translation exerted by the source culture and the target culture as well as the relationship between the two cultures. This study challenges the traditional belief of faithful translation and leads directly to another problem: what is the role of the translator facing the tension between the source text and the target text?This thesis intends to reposition the status of the translator by introducing a new notion, the translator's dynamism. This endeavor is made on the premise of the renewed understanding of translation. Then the thesis further puts forward that the translator's dynamism is inevitable in the process of translating. Finally, the various patterns of the translator's dynamism are described with the support of examples.