Historical Interpretation And Translation Reception

Regarded as the father of English modern drama and the greatest playwright after Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw wrote more than50plays in his life and received the Nobel Prize for Literature in1925. Shaw reveals in his works some grave social problems, criticizes the bourgeoisie and also puts forward his own understanding of art, that is, the art aims at changing the society rather than pursuing the "art for art’s sake". Shaw and his works, with ever-lasting social and practical significance, exert profound influences on the whole world, including millions of Chinese readers. Pygmalion, one of Shaw’s representative works, was translated by Yang Xianyi in1956and retranslated in1982,1987and2002respectively. Under specific historical contexts, Yang Xianyi has made corresponding adjustments in each translation of Pygmalion. Such an evolvement is due to Yang’s historical interpretation of the source text."The historicity of understanding" and the "history of effect" are important concepts of the philosophical hermeneutics. Gadamer believes understanding as the basic fact of human beings’ existence. Both the reader and the source text, serving as the cognitive subject and object respectively, are confined in history and, especially, can never break away from the limitation of the history itself. Therefore, historicity is inevitably reflected in understanding, which results in a certain type of "prejudice" and thus the emergence of different "horizons". Thereupon, understanding represents the gradual process of "fusion of horizons" within historical context. In this sense, according to the principle of "the history of effect", any historical text is characterized by its positive practical significance. Gadamer’s idea of philosophical hermeneutics is helpful for our understanding of the necessity and significance of retranslation. The target text is the afterlife of the source text in time and space. The source text is open for understanding, and its meaning lies in the process co-committing with the interpreter, so with various social and cultural backgrounds, different translators offer diversified interpretations of the source text.Therefore, this thesis focuses on the description of historical factors involved in Yang’s understanding of the source text Pygmalion and on the analysis of cultural strategies related with translation. In terms of "the history of effect", this thesis is also devoted to a deep insight into Yang’s translating process of Pygmalion during four different periods of time and to further analyses of the theoretical foundation and specific characteristics of "creation" and "improvement" in retranslation, which is designed to offer references for retranslating literary works and the study of Yang Xianyi’s thoughts on translation.