A Study Of Translator 's Subjectivity In English Translation Of Poems

There are three subjects, including the author、the translator and the target language reader, during the whole translating process. The translator is the subject who should take the responsibility for comprehending and recreating the original text. The translator’s subjectivity is defined as : the translator needs to play an active role in the translating process with the observation of the original meaning of the text in order to reach his final goal of translation. And two important aspects of the translator’s subjectivity are the intersubjectivity between the author and the translator, and the intersubjectivity between the translator and the target language reader. The translator becomes an important figure in the translating process in order to connect the author with the target language reader. The translator’s subjectivity has been examined by many scholars from the various perspectives, while it can be investigated from a new pespective which is cognitive context. Cognitive context is a psychological construct, which is composed of a series of concepts in human’s mind. Sperber and Wilson believe that cognitive context is composed of lexical information, logical information and encyclopedia information, which are stored in human’s memory. The author and the target language reader communicate with each other in the light of their manifestness of cognitive context,which is achieved by the translator. The translator’s subjectivity in cognitive context can be shown in these aspects: firstly, reconstructing the author’s cognitive context through the original text; secondly, presupposing the target language reader’s cognitive context and providing him the contextual assumptions.