Translator's Subjectivity On Four English Versions Of Sun Tzu's The Art Of War: Functionalist Approaches Explained

Drawing upon the German functionalist theory, the writer of this paper sets out to compare and contrast four English versions of The Art of War translated by the English sinologist Giles, the US. Navy Brigadier General Griffith, the English sinologist Minford and the Chinese translator Lin Wusun respectively with a view to bringing out various interfering factors behind the texts from linguistic and cultural perspectives and, most noticeably, the manifestation of translator's subjectivity as an important factor that gives rise to the diversity of the translations. This paper consists of five chapters. Chapter one sets forth the research background of the thesis, research objectives and methodology, significance of the subject and the layout of the thesis. Chapter two is a detailed account of the literature review and theoretical framework of the study. It makes a critical review on Functionalist approaches to translation and provides a theoretical foundation for the discussion of translator's subjectivity. Chapter three briefly introduces the author of The Art of War and the original texts and sorts out some of the influential English versions ever published. Chapter four employs the descriptive analysis, motive analysis and other research methods and provides carefully chosen examples to further develop a highly detailed profile of translator's subjectivity from multi-perspectives such as choice of original editions, status of the original texts, text form and type-setting, syntactic structure, treatments of weight and measures and treatments of cultural-loaded expressions. Chapter five is the conclusion of the present study. It is found that the four selected versions were finished in different historical periods and that the dominating influence of the social historical conditions, the bilingual ability of each translator and material available for reference all contributed to the subjectivity of each translator, who adopted various translation strategies, resulting in the diversity of the translated versions. Finally, some limitations of the present study are pointed out and the necessity of further in-depth studies is suggested.