Translator’s Subjectivity Under Framework Of Hermeneutics

For a rather long period of time, translation studies has been limited to the linguistic level only, whether in the East or the West. The status of the translator is usually "invisible" and their functions are correspondingly ignored or underestimated. Until the late1970s, the school of Translation Studies developed with the "cultural turn". Since then the Translator’s Subjectivity has become a heated subject, which has been attracting the attention of and shedding lights on the field of philosophy, literature, psychology, and ethics, etc.. With such representatives as Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher, Wihelm Dilthey, Francis George Steiner and the two contemporary ontological philosophers Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer, hermeneutics recognizes the translator’s active role in interpreting the original text. As the subject of interpretation, the translator is a subjective creator rather than a passive recipient.Romeo and Juliet, a masterpiece of William Shakespeare, boasting its unique dualistic "readability" and "performability", is loved and memorized by the entire world for centuries. The fancy for this great play finds its manifestation in various translations and stage performances. However, different translators or performers may still find it surprising for their various interpretations of the same accepted immortal work with great artistic values. This thesis thus attempts to analyze this common phenomenon through the comparative study of two Chinese versions of Romeo and Juliet:one by Zhu Shenghao and the other by Liang Shiqiu. On the basis of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, the thesis describes the historicity of understanding of and the translator’s "prejudice" towards the play and analyzes how the translator achieves the "fusion of horizons" through cultural filtration. Generally speaking, the historicity of understanding and the translator’s prejudice may directly lead to the diversity of interpretation because of dissimilar historical contexts with certain particularities and even limitedness. The horizon of the translator developing in this sense may not completely overlap that of the source text. In the process of translation, therefore, through cultural filtration, the translator may endeavor to achieve the "fusion of horizons". Basing on the theoretical background mentioned above, the thesis makes comparative study on the two Chinese Romeo and Juliet by different translators in different time, in this way, the macroscopic "fusion theory" could be proved in concrete study.