Translator's Subjectivity From The Perspective Of Communication Science

Translator, as one of the most significant elements in translation activities, has surprisingly been neglected for a long time in translation studies, thus taking the marginalized status. The culture turn in 1990s in translation studies began to pay attention to translators and bestow them the deserved importance. At the same time, emerging translation study groups like manipulation school, skopos theory, hermeneutics, etc. have all probed into the role of translators from their own angles. As for this thesis, the author is to study translator's subjectivity from a brand new perspective-communication science.Translation is a kind of communication activity in essence; therefore, it has the general features of communication. Within the framework of communication science, the characteristic and status of translator-the object of this thesis will be embodied to the largest degree, because without translator, the information transmission between the ST writer and TT reader can not be conducted smoothly.In addition, the integrated, dynamic, and open features of communication science itself will lay solid foundation for the study.Tao Te Ching is chosen as the object of study, because its unfathomable thoughts have conferred upon it the everlasting charming, and thus attracts numerous attentions from translators. Tao Te Ching has got the most translations next to the Bible, and the multiplicity is, to a great extent due to the diversified translators, that is:the subjectivity played by different translators. The thesis chooses versions translated by James Legge, Arthur Waley, Lin Yutang and Gu Zhengkun as the study cases on the basis of their respective ages and cultural differences, through which a descriptive and comparative analysis will be conducted in the framework of communication science. The translations of the three key words "Tao(道)","Te(德)"ind "Ziran(自然)"ire selected to see how the translators decode and encode the three notions, so as to fulfill their respective expected communicating purposes.Through analysis, the paper finds that the in decoding process, translator is to display his/her subjectivity to understand the ST. In this process, translator's ideology, literature competence, aesthetic inclination, language competence, etc. would be embodied to a large degree. And then the decoded information will be encoded consciously and purposefully into target language. During this stage, translator is to adopt appropriate translation strategies to overcome noises in communication like language and culture, in order to conduct the ultimate transmission of source text information. The author hopes that this study will be of some help for the transmission of Chinese culture to the world.