The Study On Translator's Subjectivity From The Perspective Of Philosophical Hermeneutics

In traditional translation studies, the translator has always been in a marginalized and disregardful cultural status. And usually, he or she is entitled some inferior names, such as "retainer", "painter", "woman matchmaker", and "translation machine" and so on. As a result, his or her subjective dynamics has not gained its due recognition, leading to the translator's simply following after the author and the source text, just like a totally invisible man. Thanks to the recent discussion and exploration in translation study on the translator's subjective consciousness and the corresponding subjectivity, such rigid situation is broken and the translator is emancipated from the position of "invisible man", stressing the translator's status and function in translation activities.It is under the current broad background of translation studies that the thesis takes the prospective of philosophical hermeneutics, a western philosophy theory, to reevaluate the translator's subjectivity. On the basis of the general introduction about the ideology and its developing process of philosophical hermeneutics, particularly through the explanation in terms of the three core concepts, "prejudice", "effective history consciousness" and "fusion of horizons", the thesis points out that philosophical hermencutics is closely connected with translator's subjectivity, and then develops the study in further step.The author thinks that the translator will more or less show his or her prejudice in the process of viewing the source text, which implies that the translator will be affected by his or her own literary cultivation, cultural connotation, value orientation and aesthetic criteria as well as some external factors, and consequently, the translator will leave his or her subjectivity in the translated text to different extents, and so, "cultural misreading" and "cultural mistranslation" are inevitable. Due to "effective history consciousness", it is impossible for the translator to completely restore what the author and source text have expressed, and it is only an ideal state to the pure and absolute "equivalence" or "faithfulness", which has provided evidence for the translator's "creative treason". Within "fusion of horizons", the horizon of the translator and that of the text are fused together, realizing the inter-subjective dialogue between the author, translator and target readers. It is reasonable to say that the three core concepts in philosophical hermeneutics find adequate theoretical evidence for the display of translator's subjectivity.In case study, through the contrast of two Chinese translation versions of Hardy's Tess of the D'urbervilles and large numbers of sample analysis, the author points out the corresponding degree and effect that are realized by the two translators in terms of cultural mistranslation, creative treason and inter-subjective dialogue in their respective translated text. And then concludes that translation has no normalized text, and translation is never the pursuance or restoration to the original meaning, but always a creative process and activity, which is endowed with the translator's subjective factors here and there. However, such subjective dynamics does not mean randomness as one likes, but always within certain degree, and grasping the degree appropriately is both the translator's responsibility and the manifestation of his or her corresponding translation technique and personality.