On The Translator’s Subjectivity In Wang Weidong’s Chinese Version Of Gulliver’s Travels

The novel Gulliver’s Travels was written by Jonathan Swift, a famous Englishsatirical writer. The original novel is full of fictional and fantastic plots. However, it isessentially a political satire to arouse people’s awareness of resisting and eagerness forfreedom by exposing and criticizing the social contradictions, the political corruptionand the cruelty of the colonial wars of Britain society in the18th century. As for WangWeidong’s version of Gulliver’s Travels, though the content of the version is almost thesame as that of the original text, the function of the translated version has been changedinto a children’s literature, designed to arouse children’s interests in reading. Therefore,the translation purpose of Wang Weidong is very obvious in his version and thedisplaying of his subjectivity plays a significant role in translation activities.Based on Vermeer’s Skopostheorie and its three rules (the skopos rule, the coherentrule and the fidelity rule), this dissertation makes a comparison between the originalnovel Gulliver’s Travels and Wang Weidong’s version to explore the displaying ofWang’s subjectivity as the translator in translation activities.This dissertation attempts to answer the following two questions:(1) Under therequirement of the translation purpose, how does Wang Weidong display hissubjectivity in the translation process?(2) When translating Gulliver’s Travels, whatrefrains him from the displaying of his subjectivity?Through the analysis and discussion in the study we can conclude these findings:(1)According to the publishing press and the preface of Wang’s version, the translationpurpose of Wang can be inferred as to render the original novel into a complete versionas the children’s literature. In order to achieve the translation purpose, Wang Weidongfully displays his subjectivity as the translator by such translation strategies as rewriting,deletion and addition, and explanatory. Besides, with the adequate consideration ofchildren’s linguistic and cognitive ability, Wang Weidong fully displays his subjectivityin the selection of words and rearrangement of sentences to make his versionunderstandable and acceptable to the target reader.(2) The fidelity rule imposes someconstraints on the displaying of the translator’s subjectivity to some extent, indicatingthat the translator could not translate the work with arbitrariness and freedom, totallyignorant of the original content. Therefore, in most time Wang Weidong adopts thesame structures as the original to reproduce the meanings of the original text. But his subjectivity is also displayed in choosing appropriate words in his version.