The Translator's Subjectivity In Translation

The present thesis is an attempt to explore the role and connotations of the translator's subjectivity in translation in a descriptive way, based on the case study of the subjectivity of Lin Yutang as a translator and Lin's translation of Six Chapters of a Floating Life, with a view to asserting the unavoidable and justified manifestation of the translator's subjectivity in translation.For a long time, translation theories had been perceived as secondary to comparative linguistics, whereby translation had been approached mainly in terms of the comparison between language structures in an ontological way. But when translation researchers came to realize that such a prescriptive and linguistic approach was inadequate to explain a human activity as complex as translation, they set to examine translation in a broader socio-cultural context. Besides, many interdisciplinary scholars, with their insightful perspectives, also began to challenge the dominant translation theories by approaching translation in a multi-dimensional and interdisciplinary way. All these gave momentum to the"cultural turn"in translation studies.A host of translation theories during the cultural turn have contributed to the promotion of the translator's status and the recognition of his/her subjective role. These theories provide us with their academic insight into the concept of the translator's subjectivity from different perspectives, namely, the perspective of the Polysystem School, the perspective of the Manipulation School, the perspective of Skopos Theory, the perspective of Hermeneutic Theory, and the perspective of Deconstruction Theory.In the light of the above related theories, the author of this thesis puts forward that the translator's subjectivity is the initiative the translator manifests in his/her translation , under the constraints of the original text and the ideology and poetics in the target culture, to achieve his/her own translation purpose. Aspects involved in this subjectivity are the translator's cultural awareness, humanistic character, cultural creativity and aesthetic creativity displayed on his/her own initiative in the act of translation .Lin Yutang is"the scholar and writer who possibly made the greatest contribution to promoting Chinese culture internationally in recent 100 years.", as the China Times of Taiwai put it, and his translation of Six Chapters of a Floating Life had been very well received by the English readers, together with"the essence of the Chinese way of life"reflected in the tragic yet poetic life of the author Shen and his wife. Six Chapters of a Floating Life is an autobiographical story by Shen Fu, a scholar living in Suzhou in the Qing Dynasty. This book, permeated with such Chinese cultural elements as values, religious beliefs, allusions, customs and linguistic culture, not only presents challenges, but also produces room for the translator to exercise his subjectivity. Lin as the translator thus inscribes his subjectivity - his life philosophy, his cultural orientation and his aesthetic attitude - in his translation.Based on the above theoretical discussions and the case study of Lin and his translation, the conclusion is achieved that the translator's subjectivity is not only inevitable but justified in translation in that it influences the translator's choice of the text to be translated, his/her interpretation of the original text and his/her representation of it in the target language. However, it should be pointed out that the study of the translator's subjectivity is descriptive in nature, and the translator's subjectivity as an objective existence in translation is to be studied and described rather than promoted or prescribed.