Translation Is Interpretation

The essence of translation is the key issue in the study of translation and different schools give different definitions to translation. According to the different research methods adopted, translation has been studied by three schools: the literary school, the linguistic school and the cultural school. In chapter one, different opinions on the essence of translation from the three schools are reviewed. The literary school studies translation activity from the perspective of aesthetics because the scholars of this school think translation is a fact that need not be defined, i.e. translating is a process of transcribing one language into another, so there is no need to probe the metaphysical issue such as the definition of translation. The linguistic school seeks for equivalence between the target language text and the source language text, regarding "faithfulness", "equivalence" as the criteria of translation. The cultural school studies translation from the perspective of culture and defines translation as an activity of cross-cultural communication, but it exaggerates the intervention from the translator and the target language culture and neglects the incommensurability between two cultures. This thesis, however, chooses to re-expound the essence of translation from the perspective of philosophical hermeneutics.In chapter two the development of hermeneutics is introduced. Hermeneutics mainly has experienced three periods: Classical Hermeneutics, Modern Hermeneutics and Contemporary Hermeneutics. At each period, hermeneutists studied translation to different extent when they constructed their own hermeneutic system. From the perspective of philosophical hermeneutics, translation is interpretation. The proposition has been probed and explained by famous hermeneutists such as Sleiermacher, Gadamer and Heiddger.In chapter three the essence of translation is re-defined from the perspective of contemporary philosophical hermeneutics. It is thought translation is interpretation, specifically speaking, translation is that in cross-cultural historical context, the translator, who has historicality, fuses his or her own horizon and that of the source language text into a new horizon. And next the translator fixes the newly formed...