| Though translation has long been part of human activities, not enough attention has been paid to the translator's role. In addition, it has taken a long time for the translator to rise from a marginalized position to a more central one. Since the"cultural turn"in the 1970s, translators have been given increased attention, and the translator's subjectivity has consequently become a hot topic in translation studies. However, the study of the translator's subjectivity has not yet formed a systematic idea because there has been excessive attention paid to the language competence and translation strategies and also inadequate study of the internal elements of the subjectivity. This thesis attempts to study the translator's subjectivity in a comprehensive manner and reveal its influence on the translating process with the case study comparison of the three English versions of the Chinese classic Fu Sheng Liu Ji.Fu Sheng Liu Ji is the autobiography of then-obscure scholar Shen Fu in the Qing Dynasty. In this literary work, Shen Fu makes a record of the happiness and sadness of his life, reflecting the natural and simple life of a common scholar. There have been three English versions translated by Lin Yutang, Shirley M. Black, and Leonard Pratt and Chiang Su-hui respectively. Of the three versions, Lin's is the earliest and the most popular and influential. Black's was published in 1960, while Pratt and Chiang's is the latest, published in the 1980s. This thesis compares and analyzes all three versions. The elements of the subjectivity discussed specifically in the thesis include the translator's language competence, cultural standpoints, translation motivation and purposes, values, and the understanding of the source text. The influence of the translator's subjectivity on the translated versions is analyzed in the perspective of structure, content, translation strategy and style. In this way, the involvement of the translator's subjectivity in literary translation is clearly revealed.
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