On The English Version Of Fortress Besieged From The Perspective Of The Translator’s Subjectivity

Fortress Besieged, a masterpiece by Qian Zhongshu, is his work with the highestartistic value. This realistic satirical novel contains rich philosophical meaning, itslanguage humorous and witty. Fortress Besieged is also a scholar’s novel with numeroussparkling statements and many references made to Chinese and western literature.Therefore, the translation of the book is no easy job and poses a great challenge to thetranslator.As the most active and the most important factor in translation, the translator had longbeen neglected in relative studies. Since the “cultural turn” in the1970s the translator hasdemonstrated their status as the subject of translation, which made the translator’ssubjectivity a hot issue in translation studies, drawing the attention from relativeresearchers. This thesis reviews the history of the translator from being rejected to beingrecognized, and adopts the translator’s subjectivity as the theoretical framework for thestudy on the English version of Fortress Besieged. This thesis conducts an analysis of thefour main elements of the translator’s subjectivity: the translator’s translation purpose,cultural competence and cultural consciousness, reader awareness as well as their creativity.The author studies how these four elements influenced the translators’ employment ofspecific translation methods, and further explores how to improve the English version inlight of the four elements of the translator’s subjectivity.Through the analysis of some translation cases of culture-loaded words in FortressBesieged in light of the translator’s subjectivity, the author of this thesis attempts anobjective evaluation of the English version of Fortress Besieged, so that a furtherunderstanding can be produced about the reason for the translators’ adoption of translationstrategy and specific methods. In addition, the thesis is a tentative probe into how toenhance the translator’s translation methods and improve the English version from theperspective of the translator’s subjectivity, with a view to shedding some light on the studyon the English version of Fortress Besieged.