A Modern Perspective To Translators' Subjectivity In Traditional Chinese Translation Studies

With the deep development of translation studies, a growing number of people have realized that the roles and functions of the translator in the translating process can not be marginalized. Consequently, the translator's position as the translation subject has been more and more acknowledged and highlighted. Since the"culture turn"after 1970s, the issue of translators'subjectivity has become one of hot topics in the translation studies, and some constructive theoretical achievements have been made. More importantly, it has provided us with completely new angles for the approaches to many great propositions in the translation studies and expanded the horizon of translation studies. Hence, the study of translators'subjectivity has the directive great significance to the translation studies.China has a long history of translation practices, thousands of years of Chinese translation history has proved that translators have been occupying the unshakable position as the most important subject in the process of translation, and they have contributed to the culture construction in some special periods of time. Moreover, the development of traditional Chinese translation studies corresponds to the history of translation, which contains rich and valuable translation thoughts and viewpoints that can be interpreted from modern approaches. This paper aims to find the contents of translators'subjectivity reflected in the traditional Chinese translation studies and analyze them from the perspective of modern translation theories, so as to explore the theoretical values of the traditional Chinese translation studies, and widen the research on the translators'subjectivity.The whole thesis is composed of three chapters. The first chapter addresses the importance of the study on translator and translators'subjectivity. Besides, based on a survey of the previous studies on translation, the author tries to give a definition of translators' subjectivity and makes a brief introduction to the relative modern translation theories about translators'subjectivity studies, such as Skopostheorie, Hermeneutic theory, etc., in attempt to further the research on the translators'subjectivity in traditional Chinese translation studies. In the second chapter, the main representative views of translators'subjectivity in the traditional Chinese translation studies are summarized through successive stages of time---the translation of Buddhist Scripture in Han and Tang Dynasties, the scientific and technical translation during late Ming Dynasty and early Qing Dynasty, translation from the Opium War to the May 4th Movement of 1919, and literary translation after the May 4th Movement. Moreover, it points out the reason and necessity of modern interpretation of this issue in traditional Chinese translation studies. In the last chapter, the author chooses several propositions, such as the purposes of the translator, translation process, translator's awareness of the target culture and reader, the translator's competence etc., to interpret the translators'subjectivity in traditional Chinese translation studies from the modern perspective.