Deconstruction And Reconstruction Of The Text: On The Translator's Subjectivity In The Two Translated Versions Of Gone With The Wind

Nowadays translator's subjectivity is widely concerned, but the profound discussions on translator's subjectivity have only focused on exterior factors such as the translator's role in the cultural communication and the ideological influence upon the translator. Scarce attention has been paid to how the translator, as a crucial human factor, influences the translation process with his/her own intrinsic factors. Hence, the main objective of this thesis is to describe the intrinsic and exterior factors which impact the translator's subjectivity and its working mechanism in the translation process. Guided with Derrida's Deconstruction theory, the thesis will deal with two aspects: translator's linguistic competence and transfer competence based on the analysis of the two Chinese translated versions of Gone with the Wind.Translation is a kind of cross-language communication. The essence of this communicative activity is the understanding and conveying of meaning which contains two levels: The first level is between the text in the SL coded by the original author and the translator; the second level is between the translator and the target reader. So the translator is both the reader and moreover the conveyer of meaning in the deconstructing and reconstructing process of translation. In this process, the translator will first deconstruct the meaning of the source text and make several assumptive meanings available from the potential context since language has the nature of différance that endows the text with the nature of openness and indeterminacy. Then s/he will modulate, extend and integrate the external and internal factors in terms of his/her own cognitive context to find the optimal relevant meaning from these available assumptions and get a relatively stable meaning in a specific context. Therefore, the translator can finally reconstruct the text in the target language, trying to make it equivalent to the meaning of the source text. Till now it can be said that the translator has accomplished the task of the communication, i.e. the deconstruction and reconstruction of the text. Either in the deconstruction of the text or in the reconstruction of the text, translator's subjectivity is completely reflected.The thesis consists of three parts besides an introduction and a conclusion. In the introduction, it gives a critical review on the translator's subjectivity in both western and domestic translation studies. Chapter One gives an outline of the theoretical base of the thesis--Deconstruction theory, and it elaborates subject and object and details the manifestation of translator's subjectivity from the Deconstruction theory. Chapter Two addresses the translator's subjectivity from translator's linguistic competence. In this chapter, Derrida's conceptions of différance and relevant translation are adopted to analyze the translator's linguistic competence. In Chapter Three, the analysis of the manifestation of the translator's subjectivity is carried out from the aspect of translator's transfer competence. In this chapter, Derrida's conceptions of supplement and trace are used to illustrate the translator's transfer competence. According to the analysis, the thesis concludes that deconstruction and reconstruction in translation are not independent processes. They would infiltrate into each other. Whether the translator deconstructs the original text or reconstructs target text, the bilingual and bi-cultural factors always work on the translator. Hence, the translator's cognition of the bilingual knowledge and his/her coordination of the bi-cultural context in deconstruction and reconstruction of the text are the display of his/her subjectivity. Translator's subjectivity is the manifestation of combination of intrinsic and extrinsic factors.