Tolerance-A Peaceful Settlement For Dispute Between "Rivalry Theory" And "Faithfulness Theory"

In the beginning of the new century, a dispute between "Faithfulness Theory" and "Rivalry Theory" is performed in translation field. Acknowledging the differences between source language and target language, supporters of "Rivalry Theory" regard literary translation as rivalry between two languages even between two cultures. They encourage translators to fully explore the advantages of the target language to make readers bathed in the fascination of the target language besides helping them comprehend meaning of the original text. Advocators of "Faithfulness Theory" launch a backlash against the conception that takes translation as a means of rivalry so as to exhibit translators' ability in manipulating their native languages, which, actually lowers the standard of faithfulness. Thus they advances that "faithfulness is the duty of translators".Disputes never end in translation field throughout the history. Taking a review on these debates, this thesis finds out that most are about whether to be faithful to the original text as well as how to. "Faithfulness" in translation has been encountered with two waves of impact: first, cultural aggression of ancient Rome; second, pervasion of deconstructionism at present. What kind of attitude should a translator maintain towards the original text and its author, and what kind of "faithfulness" should be achieved in the process of translating?Enlightened by another dispute in Hermeneutics, this thesis tries to find a new solution to settle the dispute between "Faithfulness Theory" and "Rivalry Theory" from the perspective of Hermeneutics. The concept of "understanding" is of dynamic feature in Gadamer's dictionary, and the things to be understood become uncertain and blurry in the river of history. "Rivalry Theory" finds premise from his persuasive ideas of historical understanding and "fusion of horizons". However, he goes to the extremes of relativism and falls into the circulation of Hermeneutics, which sends supporters of "Rivalry Theory" a warning signal—standard couldn't be absent in interpretation.Hirsch, opponent of Gadamer, distinguishes between "meaning" and "significance", which helps supporters of "Faithfulness Theory" find standard. However, the distance between assumed "meaning" and real "meaning", which is unmeasured, leads his absolute...