Manifestation Of The Translator's Subjectivity In The Two Chinese Versions Of Pride And Prejudice

The translator is the most active factor in translating activity. However,for a long time,under the influence of the traditional text-oriented translation theories,the translator has to oppress himself not to be subjective in translation and tries to be a faithful "servant" of the original and its author,in order to convey the author's meaning.In the 1970s,the "cultural turn" occurred in the western translation study.Many target culture-oriented translation theories are formed during this "cultural turn",such as the Skopos Theory,the Polysystem Theory and the "Manipulation School" Theory.They realize the translator's creativity and the significance of the translator's subjectivity in translation.These literary theories offer a substantial theoretical basis for describing and explaining the translator's subjectivity.The translator's subjectivity penetrates the whole process of translating activity.It is not only manifested in the understanding and illumination of the source text,and recreation of linguistic features,but also in the choice of a source text,cultural purpose of translating and translation strategies.The translator's subjectivity refers to subjective initiative of a translator as the translating subject,under the premise of respecting objective translation environment,based on comprehending the cultural demand of the target language.It has the characteristics of purposiveness,restrictiveness and creativity.Pride and Prejudice is the first and the most attractive novel by Jane Austen,an English novelist.Among many published Chinese versions of Pride and Prejudice,Wang Keyi's and Sun Zhili's have won hearts of most Chinese readers.These two versions have their own distinct characteristics:the former is concise,smooth,idiomatic and full of Chinese literary grace;the latter is faithful,accurate,clear and coherent with strong foreign taste.It is the subjective factor-the translator that leads to the phenomenon that different translators have different translations to the same literary text.Under specific social culture and historical background,Wang Keyi's life experience,personal competence,translation purpose and translation thoughts are different from Sun Zhili's.These subjective factors of translators exist objectively,and bring effect on their translations.In these two versions,the translator's subjectivity is manifested on three levels:first,on linguistic form and structure level,the two translators are different in treating proper names,some common words and sentence structures;second,on the style level,their subjectivity are shown in reproducing the styles of narrative discourses, dialogues and letters;third,on the culture level,they display different tendencies in term of religions,politics and social customs. Through the comparative study of the versions completed at different times from three aspects of diction and sentence construction, style reproduction and culture transmission,it can be seen that the differences and diversity of versions lie in objective existence of the translator's subjectivity and its influence on the versions to a great degree. Thus the translator's subjectivity turns out to be of great significance in translating process.However,the display of the translator's subjectivity is not arbitrary but constrained by many factors,such as ideology and the target text.