On Prose Translation From The Perspective Of George Steiner’s Hermeneutic Translation Theory

Hermeneutics, the study of the methodological principles of interpretation andexplanation, is essentially “the art of interpretation”. Hermeneutics, with its origindating back to ancient Greek, undergoes the periods of classical hermeneutics, generalhermeneutics, ontological hermeneutics, and philosophical hermeneutics. Somehermeneutic scholars in history paid much attention to the application of hermeneuticsto the translation. One of the representative figures of these scholars is George Steiner.In his book, After Babel——Aspects of Language and Translation, published in1975,George Steiner put forward hermeneutic translation theory which elaboratestranslation practice as the four-beat model of the hermeneutic motion, trust,aggression, incorporation and restitution.Compared with hundreds of years’ research on hermeneutics in foreign counties,the domestic study on application of hermeneutics to translation started decades ago.Ever since Yang Wuneng’s first comprehensive introduction of western hermeneuticideas to the domestic translation circle in1987, there had arisen a research trend at theend of1990s in domestic translation circle. As few domestic hermeneutic scholarsapply Steiner’s hermeneutic translation theory to translation practice, this thesismakes an attempt to appreciate essay translation from the perspective of hermeneutictranslation theory after systematically introducing hermeneutics and hermeneutictranslation theory, to find that how George Steiner’s four-fold motion is reflected intranslation practice and how it affects translation practice.Prose often refers to the literary genre as opposed to the other three major literarygenres─poetry, fiction, and drama. With flexible structure and vivid and conciselanguage, prose has no metrical pattern as in poetry, no breath-taking stories as infiction, and no acute conflicts as in drama. Therefore, it is easier to present theresearch findings by doing research on essay translation from the perspective of Gerge Steiner’s hermeneutic translation theory. Selected Modern Chinese Essays3is thenewly published book of prose translation and a subsequent volume to Zhang Peiji’sserial works Selected Modern Chinese Prose Writings (1997and2003). The originalChinese essays in it are written by many renowned celebrities and their translation byZhang Peiji is equally excellent, which provides a perfect case study.While analyzing the essays in Selected Modern Chinese Essays3withhermeneutic translation theory, this thesis makes an attempt to develop the fourhermeneutic steps of Steiner’s theory to apply the theory to the C-E essays translation.Trust; a successful activity of translation needs the translator’s trust that thesource text has something significant worth our understanding and translation. It is thestarting movement of translation. Therefore, in this thesis, translator’s personalinterest on prose and his choice of original texts are essential points to the act of trustand translator’s linguistic and cultural competence can ensure that his trust is apt tolead to a masterpiece of translation.Aggression; as the subject of understanding is the translator, his prejudice, playsan important role in the understanding of source text. Zhang Peiji accomplishes theC-E translation with pre-understanding of English linguistic and cultural elements anddifferent understandings of the source text.Incorporation is the movement of incorporative. While the translator is importingsymbolic sets or cultural ensemble of the source text into the target text, he tends toadopt the translation strategy of domestication or foreignization.Restitution is the last stage of hermeneutic act with which equivalence betweenChinese (culture) and English (culture) will be restored. In the book Selected ModernChinese Essays3, two compensative methods, amplification and annotation, aremostly used to better deliver hidden linguistic or culture information in the sourcelanguage to target readers.