On The Translator's Subjectivity In Literary Translation

As translation studies take "cultural turn," more and more emphasis has been put on the studies on the translator's subjectivity. Related theories such as polysystem theory, Skopos theory, and deconstruction theory study the translator's subjectivity respectively from the perspective of cultural background, the perspective of translation purposes, and the perspective of "true" meaning of the original. However, in the framework of these three theories, the translator's own psychological process, as an important issue in the translator's subjectivity in translation (including literary translation), has been paid little attention to.If we analyze the main characteristics of literary translation, we may find that one important characteristic of literary creation is also shared in literary translation, that is, though, compared with the writer, the room of freedom of creation that the translator enjoys is much smaller, the translator still does creative work in literary translation. Such being the case, it may be feasible to explore literary translation from the perspective of aesthetic reflection theory, an important theory in literary creation.Aesthetic reflection theory is the result of development of Marxism's materialist theory of reflection into the field of literature and art. It holds that, even though the subject of creation is constrained by various objective factors in the creation process, the subject initiatively reflects the object through the refraction from his/her own aesthetic sensibility and aesthetic structure which may be presented as aesthetic comment on the object in each creation process. That is to say, in literary creation, the writer represents the object and presents his/her own aesthetic comment on the object. The artistic reality in literary creation constitutes the substance attribute of the object and the writer's aesthetic comment constitutes the aesthetic attribute of the object to the writer. So the writer's psychological process is emphasized in aesthetic reflection theory. As in the writer's psychological process, he/she will show his/her subjectivity, so aesthetic reflection theory can be used to analyze the writer's subjectivity. Following the analysis of the writer's psychological process, further analysis reveals...