Translation Of Wolf Totem From The Perspective Of Translator’s Subjectivity

Taking the cross-culture communication as its ultimate goal, translation is a bridge between the western and eastern culture. It has been playing an increasing important role in today’s social and culture life. Meanwhile, it is also the only path for the "Going Out" project of our Chinese literature. The translator, as the subject of the translation process, is the crucial figure who decides the translated text’s quality. However, the conventional translation theories give great emphasis to the source text, making the translator an invisible man, a servant or an imitator to the readers. The emergence of "culture turn" in the late1970s has stricken the conventional translation theory. The status of the translator begins to move towards the center, and their subjectivity, initiativity and creativity have been given full play from then on. The translation researches also pay much more attention to the impact that the translators’aesthetic standard, culture standpoint, translation purpose and translation principles have on during the translation process. The translator’s subjectivity plays a considerably significant role in literature translation as literature translation itself is a sort of creative activity. To some extend, the translator would consciously or unconsciously comply with his own aesthetic standard and take a selective understanding of the original text, then apply some suitable strategies to rewrite or manipulate the translation.The novel Lang Tuteng written by Jiang Rong, was published by Chang Jiang Art and Literature Press in2004, which aroused a big hit among the society and soon become a best seller. It has been seven years since its publication, but its readership covers a much wider range than before and the number of readers continues to rise. In2007, its English version Wolf Totem got the first Man Asian Literary Prize, which should attribute to the famous American sinologist Howard Goldblatt. He skills in both Chinese and English and is familiar with our Chinese culture. Beside this, he also has abundant experiences in China and he adheres to an earnest attitude in translation work. All these aspects are indispensible for his successful translation.This thesis attempts to probe into the translation of Wolf Totem from the perspective of translator’s subjectivity, and analyze the forming of personal subjective factors along with their concrete manifestation in the translation activity. This thesis is to be divided into six parts:the first part introduces the research background, the general information of the original text and the English version as well as its current research situation; the second part is the theoretic basis of this thesis, which introduces the concept of translator’s subjectivity and its present study situation both at home and abroad along with its close connection to literary translation; the third part explores the influencing factors of translator’s subjectivity and how they exert impacts on the translation from four respects, namely, ideology, poetics, patronage and the target readership; the fourth part is a continuous chapter following the third one, and it mainly focuses on the manifestation of translator’s subjectivity or the specific manipulation of the translator toward the text during the translation process; the fifth part can be seen as a supplementary study, which talks about the reasons for Howard Goldblatt’s successful translation from four aspects; based on the former parts, the conclusion points out the significance of this thesis, summarizes all the research contents and makes an introspection of this research.