On Translator’s Subjectivity

Western translation studies have been for a long time emphasizing the objectivityof the translation. The emphasis placed on ST under these circumstances leads to therelatively periphery position of the translator. From the “cultural turn” in the1970sand the discussions on the translation ethics in recent years, the role of the translatorhas been rediscovered and foregrounded. At the core of cultural exchange, thetranslator figures prominently in translating and introducing the culture of the originaltext and enriching the target culture. If the study on translation wish to argueconvincingly that translation is a creative and not merely a reproductive activity, it isimperative to explore the issue of style on the basis of the translation itself. Besides,the display of translator’s subjectivity does not equal to translator’s idiosyncrasies.Therefore this research will also include conditioning factors on translator’ssubjectivity in order to fully understand this concept.This thesis first reviews the previous researches on the subject of translation,translator’s subjectivity, its representations and translational norms. The results showsthese studies have so far been characterized by theoretical speculations plus somechosen examples and lack an empirical research supported by a corpus or largeamount of data. This paper, however, selects two English versions of Shiji to build aparallel corpus. The translation of Nienhauser is the subject of this study, and thetranslation by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang is consulted and compared with in theprocess. The representations of translator’s subjectivity and its underlyingconditioning factors will be summarized from statistical analysis and close reading ofthe TT. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches are adopted in the research.The research shows that the differences appeared in the translation reside mainlyin the hands of the translator which represented by the following aspects: paratextualmaterials, word selection, sentence, textual organization, rhetorical devices, andglosses. It can be concluded from the research that:1. The Nienhauser’s translation iscomparatively longer and more complicated with abundant paratextual materials andglosses.2. Ninehauser’s translation employs a wider range of vocabulary with TTR 11.58to10.4.3. The length of sentence is shorter in Nienhauser’s version withaverage sentence length15.14to17.2words and the translator is also flexible inshifting between different types of sentence.4. The textual organization of Nienhauserdeparts largely from the ST with paragraph number587to130.5. In translating therhetorical and cultural-loaded words, Nienahauser adopts basically the literaltranslation attached with large amount of glosses which serves as an integral part ofthe translation. In summary, in conveying the style of the ST, Nienhauserdemonstrates its subjectivity, while in translating the cultural elements in the ST,Nienhuaser manifests his passivity. Furthermore, the conditioning factors oftranslator’s subjectivity includes: social and historical context, the text type of the ST,the purpose of the translator, the expectation of target-readership, patronage, andprofessional norms.