From Imagined Objectivity To Controlled Subjectivity

One significant issue in translation discourses is that what is to be put in the central position in the course of translating, which concerns not only discussions of translation criteria and translation evaluation criteria, but also the entire philosophical studies on translation. Translation criteria and translation evaluation criteria vary greatly with transformation of times and places, in which the emphasis on distinctive elements and the resulting norms more or less exert influences on the translator's decision-making concerning language-use and wording of the TL (target language) text in translation. Traditionally, for instance, it was believed that there existed absolute objectivity in the transferring process. Such objectivity, it is said, resides in the SL (source language) text and will ever retain itself throughout times and spaces. The translators thus attempt to pursue a full transferring of the "original meaning" into the TT (target text). However, such belief has been put into serious questioning in the 20th century as a result of some theoretical arguments such as deconstruction and cultural turn of translation. Meanwhile, an undeniable fact of an utterance (a text particularly) is its ever-productiveness—it continuously produces new meanings as it is read or interpreted each time, which indicates the possibility of indeterminate understanding in textual reading. Besides, that an interpreter produces a distinctive version each time he tries his hand at the same text suggests that the translator's understanding does not in fact equal to his language-use. Therefore, "translator's subjectivity" as a new term is under discussion in a multidimensional way at present.In view of the assertion that the translator should bring his "subjectivity" into play in the translating process, this thesis sets out to explore the sub-ob relationship (including subject-object and subjectivity-objectivity relationship) in translation in a multidimensional way with particular emphasis on the fundamentally philosophical explanations of subject-object cognition in translation practice and the participating elements in translation, including facts of matter, SL author, ST (source text), translator, TT (target text), and TL readers. Based on her translating experiences and the factual productiveness of textual meanings, the author assumes that the translator often has a conscious or unconscious swing between being objective and subjective in the process of translating. To verify the hypothesis, the author tries to discuss the issue in broad theoretical fields (especially in those disciplines where meaning, understanding, and interpretation are to be determined) before clarifying some key terms and concepts involved in the current research. The issue in chapter four is then addressed epistemologically with both non-Marxist and Marxist approaches and with some approaches in disciplines which were traditionally applied in translation studies, mainly linguistics and hermeneutics.The author finds that there is a conceptual deviation of "translator's subjectivity" from the understanding of western theorists among the Chinese scholars—the foreign scholars apply the word in a descriptive way while the domestic scholars tend to adopt the word prescriptively. Chinese scholars solely observe its denotation of the translator's subjective rendering when introduce the term into Chinese language and thus focus more on the central position of translators meant by "translator's subjectivity". It is also found that although the domestic theoretical orientation puts the translator in the supreme position above the other elements in translation activities, it is still difficult to position subject and object in translation practice. The soundness of the findings is tested by revealing the dynamic nature of translation activities in the light of the argumentation and illustrative examples.It is concluded that since the findings in many a field reveal that the truth of meaning is relative and contextual, that any representation of truth is more or less subjective and translation is in nature a representation of representation where objectivity and subjectivity has merged in a large measure, the demarcation line between subject and object becomes indistinctive in translation activities, and the attainment of objectivity becomes imaginary rather than factual. In view of this, fidelity in translation becomes attitudinal rather than institutional and the translator's awareness of existence of being subjective becomes important in controlling his or her subjectivity; otherwise, translation will belie its name.