The Fusion Of Horizon Of The Source Text And That Of The Translator

With the cultural turn of translation studies since 1980s, and the flourish of feminism in culture study, attentions have been drawn to gender issues in translation and the research paradigm of translation studies has shifted from the source text/author centered paradigm to highlighting the subjectivity of the target text/translator. Meanwhile, translation field more acutely aware that the subjectivity of translator is not isolated, but closely related to the source text/author and the target text/ reader. Translation action is no longer regarded as pure language change but the horizon-fusion between the subjects.In this context, this study will take a typical androgynous text Jing Hua Yuan (the source text) and its English version Flowers in the Mirror translated by Lin Tai-yi as the research object. Adopting an integrated model of androgyny and fusion of horizons as a theoretical framework, this study will try to make a relatively objective description to androgynous horizon reflected in Jing Hua Yuan and possible gender horizon maintained by its translator Lin Tai-yi, and then mainly explore the fusion of their gender horizons by comparative analysis to the original and its English version of Jing Hua Yuan, based on quantitative description of frequency and percentage about translating strategies in the lights of the theories of androgyny and horizon-fusion.Through the exploration into the fusion of gender horizons of Jing Hua Yuan and its translator Lin Tai-yi, the following conclusions have been drawn:1. Jing Hua Yuan accomplished by Li Ruzhen in the Qing Dynasty, shows a typical androgynous horizon, which is influenced by viewpoints of the author, the social and cultural elements of the Qing Dynasty.2. The translator Lin Tai-yi, an Chinese American immigrant writer and editor, is a real bilingual. Lin is a female and is influenced by her family who cares about women issues, and furthermore she realizes the strong feminist ideas in Jing Hua Yuan, which may led to her feminist horizon. However, Lin would review the feminist features reflected in the source text from her own gender horizon but also keep the other horizon (masculine horizon) in her mind at any time when she was translating.3. The comparative analysis of the source text and its English version of Jing Hua Yuan and quantitative description of frequency and percentage about translating strategies of domestication and foreignization help this study achieve such following conclusions: almost ideal fusion of the gender horizons of Jing Hua Yuan and its translator Lin Tai-yi from the feminine perspective, conflict between them from the masculine perspective, partly fusion of them from the androgynous perspective.This study is not only helpful to understand the fusion of gender horizons of Jing Hua Yuan and its translator Lin Tai-yi but also useful to realize the mechanism of gender culture to the fusion of horizons in translation process.