Philosophical Hermeneutics In Translation Studies

As a part of human life, translation is actually a complex activity, which is the bridge for the different cultures to communicate with each other. Translation is a kind of interpretation, while hermeneutics refers to the understanding of meaning and the relationship between reader and text. Therefore, the combination of translation, understanding and interpretation is of great significance for the studies of the translation theory and practice.The present thesis mainly introduces some important principles of Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics: historicity of understanding, fusion of horizons and effective history, as well as their implication and guidance to the studies of translation including the impact on the misunderstanding, cultural filtering, rereading, rerendering and so on. Based on these principles, the present thesis also tries to the re-understand the problems existing in the translation from the perspective of philosophical hermeneutics to achieve a better understanding of translation, to provide a new perspective for translation studies. Through the analysis, we have a better understanding about the human being's historicity of understanding, the existence of legitimate prejudice, and the horizon distance resulted from the temporal distance and the situational change between the original author and the interpreter. So we realized that real understanding is not to avoid or overcome the historical limitation, but to make a faithful evaluation to the translated version with the development of history. Meanwhile, it should reflect the necessity for the existence of diverse translated versions. Thus, the phenomenon of cultural filtering with different horizons is not only inevitable but also reasonable.In the course of analysis, the present thesis employs a series of translation studies in China to interpret the main points in order to provide the new theoretical perspectives for the application of the philosophical hermeneutics in translation studies and to afford a new vision for further exploration to translation.