Translator 's Subjectivity In French Translation

Translation has been making very important contribution to the communication and development among civilizations all around the world. But, while we acknowledge the great contribution of the translation, we often overlook the people that directly created the translation: the translators. Numerous examples from the translation history has demonstrated to us that the translators are the leading role of translation activities, and to study the subjectivity of the translators is critical to study of translation.Over the last decade, a wide range of outstanding studies have been made on the subjectivity of translators by scholars in China, but generally speaking, the study on the subjectivity of translators is still in the starting stage. We still lack systematic study on how the translators "define" translation activities and how the subjectivity of translator is affected by the contemporary circumstance. Also the study hasn’t be escalated to theoretic level. The study made by western countries was started much earlier and at a much higher level. As an important nation in the west, France is a nation where different trends of though emerge and blend, and there are a lot of achievement worth studying in the both fields of translation practice and theory of translation.To study the representation of the subjectivity of the translators in different stages of French translation history, the study will divide the French translation History into3main stages:the first stage is the stage of early translation study, it starts from time of Ciecro of ancient Rome to end of16th century. In this stage, the translation is mainly based on pratice and expierience derived from translation practice. The second stage is the stage of contemporary translation study, from17th century to the end of19th century. This stage is an ear of "unfaithful beauty", and study was mainly focused on the translation of literatures. Compared to translation of other kind, the subjectivity of translator in literature translation are more profound and complicated. The third stage is from20th century to now, is mainly about subjectivity of the translators in contemporary translation theory. This definition of the stages of French translation history in this study is not absolute. It is mainly based on maturity level of the translation practice and translation theory, also the emergence of different trend of translation. This study aims to systematically research the effects of subjectivity of translators in different social, cultural and political setting, summarize the factors that affect the subjectivity, and the future direction for the research on this subject. This study will take the form of description, focus on the explanation and analysis of the theory, and will perform the research with depth from a new perspective. In the past the study on the subjectivity of translation was usually made from a macroscopic perspective. Using History of French translation theory as frame work, this study will not only have a more systematic approach on the subject, but will also study the subjectivity of translators in different historic stage with different historic settings, which will bring good coverage and depth to the research.