The Translator’s Multiple Roles In Literary Translation Activities

Translation is an ancient activity that can be traced to more than two or threemillennia ago. The history of human civilization, to some extent, is a history oftranslation. The translator plays an essential role in the transmission and development ofhuman civilization. Throughout the history of translation studies, both home and abroad,the understanding of translators’ roles has been a process of constant change,development and enrichment. Different as these thoughts are, they all highlight theimportance of translators’ multiple roles. Although these theories have differentemphases, they do not commendably integrate the translator’s multiple roles. Systematicstudies on translators’ roles, however, have only emerged in recent decades. In today’sincreasingly globalized world, the prevalence of human civilization exchanges comes toan unprecedented extent, and therefore it becomes urgent to redefine the translators’roles.In this thesis, the author summarizes the four roles of translators in literarytranslation by researching and synthesizing previous literature. To understand fullytranslators’ roles in the context of globalization, we cannot confine our scope to thelanguage level, but need to address ourselves to macrocosmic issues of culturalcommunication and exchange. The author discusses the concrete manifestations oftranslators’ multiple roles in literary translation. The thesis mainly involves thefollowing aspects:First, it argues that the translator plays four roles in literary translation: reader,writer, cultural mediator, and critic.Second, it demonstrates how the positioning of translators’ roles influences andguides translation practice, in terms of the choice of translation strategies and methods,the form of texts of translated versions; how we achieve effective cultural exchange andcommunication; and how to improve the overall quality and theoretical awareness ofpractitioners.The author comes to the following conclusions: the translator shoulders importantresponsibilities in exchanges and dialogues of heterogeneous cultures in the context ofglobalization. The translator’s four roles as reader, writer, cultural mediator and criticare interdependent and interconnected rather than isolated from each other in theprocess of translation. The translation strategies and methods that the translator adopts need to take into consideration the original author’s intentions, translation purposes,audience, text types, and many other factors.