Target Culture And The Translator's Subjectivity

As a famous writer and translator,Lin Yutang(林语堂) made great contributions to the understanding between China and the West, especially to the introduction of Chinese culture to the world.His bilingual and bicultural ability of both Chinese and English made him attain great achievements in translation.For many years,however,his translated works have not attracted enough attention from Chinese translators or translation theorists;as a result,the research on his translation is not fully conducted.Among all his translations,the most notable one is Six Chapters of a Floating Life(referred to as SCFL in this thesis),which is the translation of the Qing Dynasty author Shen Fu's(沈复) Fu Sheng Liu Ji(referred to as FSLJ in this thesis).In recent years, investigations into SCFL,especially into the strategies and methods Lin adopted and the manifestations of the translator's subjectivity in it,have been made by some researchers.Nevertheless,no study has ever touched on the influential elements on the translator's subjectivity in this work.To view the work from a new perspective,the present thesis,taking contemporary theories of cultural studies and the translator's subjectivity as its theoretical bases,and systematic random sampling as its methodology,analyzes the adjustment of sentence structures and the transformation of rhetorical devices in SCFL,trying to make clear the influences of the target linguistic culture on the translator's subjectivity in it.The whole thesis consists of five parts.Firstly,it gives a brief account of the background,objectives,and methodology of the present research as well as the structure of the thesis.Secondly,it provides a brief review of a number of studies of Lin Yutang,and studies of his translation of SCFL,identifying their achievements and at the same time finding out their weaknesses.Then based on Eugene A.Nida's classification of culture,it comes to the influences of target culture on the translator's subjectivity,mainly dealing with the connotations of target culture and the translator's subjectivity,the cultural elements involved in translation and their influences on the translator's subjectivity.After that,it carries out a case study of Lin Yutang's translation of SCFL.By employing the methodology of systematic random sampling,the author of the present thesis analyzes Lin's translation strategies and his composition of target texts,mainly probing into his strategies of adjusting sentence structures and dealing with rhetorical devices,and finds that due to the influences of the unique grammar and rhetorical devices of the English language,Lin Yutang mainly adopted domestication in translating FSLJ.His strategy is reflected in two aspects:a) techniques of addition,deletion,combination and separation are used in adjusting sentence structures;and b) techniques of omission,acquisition,and substitution are employed in dealing with rhetorical devices.Finally comes the conclusion.