Translator’s Subjectivity From The Perspective Of Fusion Of Horizons

Tao Te Ching, also called Laozi, is an important philosophical classical work in pre-Qin in China. It is also the fundamental work of Taoist School. In content, the book is broad, deep, and teeming, with Lao Zi’s unique power of understanding and dialectical thinking about universe, nature, society and human life. In form, the language of the book is simple, sublime, but with poetic touch. The sentence patterns are flexible, but not short of aphorisms. Tao Te Ching can be regarded as the quintessence of perfect combination of philosophy, literature and art. Tao Te Ching has182English versions with their own characters since the first English version in1884. A large quantity of research from the perspectives of analysis and comparison of translation works, translators, key words and style, hermeneutics have been done by researchers home and abroad, however, the research on translator’s subjectivity of the translations of Tao Te Ching from the perspective of fusion of horizons is rare.This thesis makes a comparative study of the two English versions of Tao Te Ching from the perspective of fusion of horizons. The difference between the original horizon and the translator’s horizon can not be canceled by the translator. The appearance of understanding is the result of fusion of horizons in order to fuse the translator’s horizon with the source text horizon. The translator’s subjectivity is studied from the perspective of fusion of horizons. Two English versions of Tao Te Ching are compared. Through analyzing the translator’s preparation work before translation, the ways of dealing with the linguistic and cultural elements, and the different translating features, the thesis finds that the translator’s subjectivity has been displayed in the translation of Tao Te Ching.The thesis analyzes the translator’s subjectivity of Tao Te Ching translated by Arthur Waley and Gu Zhengkun from the perspective of fusion of horizons. As a Chinese classical work, Tao Te Ching combines the philosophical, literary, and artistic horizon characters of the text, which will be fused with the translator’s horizon. The text horizon with diversity and abundance, after fusing with the translator’s horizon, becomes a new horizon. At the same time, the characteristics of the respective horizon will be generated.