The Necessity And Significance Of Literary Retranslation From The Perspective Of Hermeneutics

In recent years, there are more and more retranslated versions of western masterpieces, accordingly, there is the heated discussion, in which there are different opinions and ideas: some researchers think it is necessary while others think it is a waste of time and effort; some think it makes great contribution to both translation theory and translation practice while other think it is just repetition and copy; some just do comparison studies among different translated versions while others try to find the reasons behind it and explain it with application of linguistic or philosophical theories. So the paper tries to discuss the necessity and importance of retranslation from the perspective of modern hermeneutics.The paper firstly analyses the changes of original meaning understanding, translators, target readers, translation standard and translation strategies caused by different historical situation with application of some key concepts of modern hermeneutics; and then tries to verify different translated versions or retranslated versions are just the result of all these changes. In order to prove what we have discussed in the part is reliable and valid; the paper compares the three translated versions of David Copperfield-- Lin Shu's version, Dong Qiusi's version and Zhang Guruo's version in macro way and micro way: the macro way refers to the comparison on their historical situation and translators' background information, the micro way refers to the detailed comparison on translation strategies and skills; then the author of the paper proves that the differences among the three translated versions are caused by historical situation. Finally, we can find retranslation is deeply rooted in historical situation.Through the discussion, we can draw the conclusion that retranslation is not an individual, random and dispensable activity, but a collective, deliberate and necessary one. The author also hopes that we can have high tolerance about new retranslated versions, because it is helpful and beneficial not only for the translation studies, but also for the development and diversity of our culture.