Translator's Personality: From The Maslowan Perspective

For a long time until today, the mainstream translation theories, both at home and abroad, have been focusing on discussing and laying down translation principles or norms. Among these,"faithfulness"and"fluency"have become generally accepted truth and been placed in the position of"canons"that cannot and should not be violated. Good translators should wipe out their selves, and good translations should be the"original". Under these canons, norms and taboos, translators are always full of fear and have to be very careful. They even have to try to shelter themselves under them. Translators have always been in the marginal position and they have only shadowy personality or even none at all. Creativity and personal feeling are repressed.The author of this thesis attempts to approach the translator in translating activities from the existential-humanistic psychological theory of Abraham. H. Maslow, applying some of his ideas and concepts to translation study, mainly including his concepts of basic needs, self-actualization, creativity and peak experience, etc. The aim is to re-recognize and reveal the real person of the translator with his own personality in translating activities, and return them their due position and personality.The argument of the author is that although for a long time translator's basic needs have been repressed by the mainstream translation theories to wipe out translator's self and inhibit translator's subjectivity and creativity and thus translator's personality in translation activities, yet translation is inevitably self-actualization of the translator, that is to display and express his own personality. In translation, the translator becomes himself, not the original writer, nor any person that others ask him to be. The process of translating is one in which the translator perceives and feels as a subject, and translates what he feels in the foreign text, expresses naturally and spontaneously his own inner voices. A translation will inevitably display the unique personality of the translator, that is, his own values, perceiving, idiosyncrasies, feeling, innovation and creativity, etc., as well as his historical-cultural characteristics will be displayed and actualized in translations.