A Study Of The Translator's Subjectivity In Literary Translation

Fidelity is an essential issue in translation. Whether a version can retain absolute faithfulness to the source text has been a controversial matter in the translation circle. Some scholars hold the view that a translator, humble and inferior, must follow the original's suit both in the content and in the form, and it is possible for him to keep absolute faithfulness to the source text. Other scholars, on the contrary, think that many factors such as linguistic and cultural differences make it impossible to preserve complete fidelity to the original. In order to further probe into the subject from the perspective of epistemology, the author of this thesis holds that the translator's subjectivity is the fundamental reason of impossibility of absolute fidelity to the source text, and it can be more clearly seen in the process of literary translation.The translator brings his subjective dynamics into play in the course of literary translation, and his personal characteristics are more or less manifested in his version. Setting out from the Hermeneutic Theory of Hans-Georg Gadamer, a leading German philosopher, and adopting his explanatory concepts of "prejudice" as well as "fusion of horizons", together with analyzing some specific examples of literary translation, this thesis aims to reveal that the translator's subjectivity exists in his reading and representing processes, and the translator's subjectivity is the radical cause of impossibility of absolute faithfulness to the source text in literarytranslation.This thesis consists of five chapters besides introduction and conclusion.The introduction briefs the content and the basic structure of this thesis.Chapter One expounds connotations of literary translation and the translator's subjectivity respectively.Chapter Two presents Hans-Georg Gadamer's Hermeneutic theory, and gives a special concern to his concepts of "prejudice" and "fusion of horizons", which will be adopted as the theoretical basis of this thesis.Chapter Three explores how the translator, as a reader of a literary text, brings his subjectivity into play in the course of reading.Chapter Four analyzes that the translator's style does exist in his representing course.Chapter Five discusses the creativity and the limitation of the translator's subjectivity in literary translation.The conclusion provides the summary for the whole thesis.