The Philosophical Hermeneutic Of Translation

Walter Benjamin, the preeminent German thinker, who has aroused a great sensation in the western intellectual circle by his unique thoughts and theories in his works, however, has kept away by some researchers for the combination of his Messiah and Maxism which seems like a little ambiguous and mysterious. As a result of that, the researches of him has always been centered on his Theory of Allegory, Thinking on Literature and Critique, Art Production Theory and The Theory of Aesthetic Salvation and things the like, but bald and bare on his stance to translation which are the representation and infulence of his theories above and his linguistic attitude as well.Browsing the articles and periodicals about his translation attitude, I find most of them are strolling on the surface, but not stick into the deep; echoing to others' saying about his mysterious appearance, but not look at it at its own standpoint. Based on the materials selected, I noticed that misunderstanding has been made about Benjamin's translation stance, preparatorily, resulting from the lack of sincere study of Benjamin and the problems involved in translation. With the development and criterion of translation, it goes without saying that the re-orientation of Benjamin's stance to translation is necessary and impending.This dissertation re-orientates Benjamin's stance to translation from the perspective of the "shaping" of the translated text, analyzing in three parts——the essence of translation, translation process and translated text——by the application of several theories such as the philosophical hermeneutic, phenomenology, aesthetics and Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory so on and so forth, to support my point that Benjamin's stance to translation is the philosophical hermeneutic of translation based on the traditional achivements but get rid of the bind of tradition, which derives from a new domain and scope and should be re-considered and respected but not ignored or misunderstood.This dissertation consists of five major parts. In the introductory part, it touches upon the topic of the misunderstanding and short-handed study of Benjamin's stance to translation as well as the deficient pondering of translation in different angles, as a result of which it is necessary and imperative that translation study should be sincere and Benjamin's stance to translation should be re-oriented.In the second part, it offers a review of the various opinions about the essence of translation and focuses primarily on the analysis of them, some of which are acceptable while some made the translation study loitering on the traditional achivements and working in vain; by the analysis of traditional achievements as well as Benjamin's thoughts involved, with the backing of different theories, I try to give a positive and rational attitude to Benjamin's view.The third part, which is the core of this dissertation, presents the different definitions of "translation", clears our topic and shrinks that our domain is the "translation process" in a narrow sense which can be narrated as the process in which the text is produced. By the support of correlative theories, a conclusion is produced that translation process is a spiral movement presenting endless changes by the cooperative physical and psychological activiy, during the course of which meaning moves between the original text and the comprehension of the translator with dynamic fluctuations represented by gains and losses of cultural features, by which the translator spares no effort to seek for the summit and perfect state of the original which is a chimera in reality but goes on with no ending. It's the same like the metaphorical meaning of "pure language"—the dynamic movement to pursue the perfectness but realized as fragmentary in different extent.The fourth part specifies the translated text as the object of "coexistence"and "amalgamation" entailed with various represents and meanings, upheld by valuation judgement and aesthetics, by the way, to illustrate the relationship between the original-text and the translated-text is mutual-complenmentary, not supplementary, and thus to show the independency of the translated-text and admit the reasonable narration of Benjamin.Then follows the conclusion part, which makes a summary of the central ideas of this thesis: Walter Benjamin's stance to translation, different but not deviated from traditional ones. It's out of traditional cognitions by assimilating the distillates embodied, but does not confine to them. Apart from the mysterious appearance, it breathes new air to the translation study by combining the phenomenology and philosophy together in the cognition of translation and provides philosophical hermeneutic of translation, which should be re-considered and expected.