On The Translator's Subjectivity

For a long period in history, translation approach is prescriptive and source-text oriented. Much of the emphasis is put on the nature, criteria and techniques of translation both at home and abroad. This translation approach highlights the decisive status of the source text and puts the translator in a neglected position. The "Cultural Turn" in translation studies in the west after the 1970s has brought about new dimensions and approaches. With the uprising of the descriptive translation approach, the complex role that the translator plays in the whole process of translation has gained increasing attention among translation theorists. The subjectivity of the translator, one branch of the study on the translator, has become a necessary and important research subject. Among the achievements attained in this research subject, there are still controversies and misunderstandings on such issues as why and how the translator has to resort to his subjectivity, the various forms of it and its impact upon translation etc. Against this background, this thesis, in an attempt to furnish the study of the translator, addresses the subjectivity of the translator from the perspective of hermeneutics by analyzing the connotation of the translator's subjectivity, its manifestations and restrictions.The present thesis holds that the translator's subjectivity refers to his subjective creativity in the process of translation. Philosophical hermeneutics provides theoretical basis for the study of the translator's subjectivity. It argues that the historical existence of the text and the translator presupposes the course of understanding a creative one. Accurate understanding is based on the translator's creative reconstruction of the historical situation of the text when produced to reach the whole unity with the author. The translator's cultural and historical tradition, as the hunting factor in translating, leads to his conscious and unconscious shifts and improvements of the original in crossing the cultural obstacles to fulfill the cross-cultural communication of translation. The translator's subjectivity as an undeniable fact is pervasive and in various forms. Despite that, in view of the...