A Hermeneutical Answer To The Question Of Translator's Ethics

The thesis explores the question of translator's ethics and tries to find an answer to it. The theoretical basis for this thesis is hermeneutics, especially Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics. Besides, ethical theories such as deontology and ethical egoism are also employed to examine the problem deeply. Translator's ethics in this thesis is studied in the basic process of the act of translation which is theoretically divided into three interrelated parts: translator's purposes, translator's relationship with both source and target texts and cultures, and translator's performance in presenting source text meaning to the readers. Firstly, skopos theory is discussed and criticized with the help of important conceptions of Gadamer's hermeneutics such as"prejudice,""legitimate prejudice,""creative negativity,""fusion of horizons,"and"true hermeneutical experience."The author believes that while prejudices are inevitable,"bigoted purposes"should never stand in the translator's way of conducting an honest and dialectical dialogue with source text for the truth to come forward. Secondly, foreignization and domestication in the extreme are discussed and criticized. It is pointed out that translation is not reconstruction but integration, and that fluency does not serve as a yardstick against which to differentiate domestication from foreignization. Translators should try to find a proper place to stand between these extremes and establish meaning's validity in a new language in accordance with the doctrine of the mean. Thirdly, the thesis employs conceptions of"game"and"play"in Gadamer's hermeneutics to disclose the double-sided character of translation. Translators when presenting the meaning should be wary of hiding what they cannot understand in the original or making it too clear at the expense of the overtones of the original. Translators should polish their command of source and target languages and remain properly neutral in the process of translation. At last, the author offers an answer to the question of translator's ethics as a summary of the previous discussions.