A Study On The Chinese Translation Of The Child In Time From The Perspective Of The Hermeneutic Motion

This thesis conducts a research of the Chinese translation of the novel TheChild in Time from the perspective of the Hermeneutic school in the area oftranslation studies. The Child in Time is a very popular novel composed by the“National Author” of the contemporary Britain, Ian McEwan. He Chu, a famousChinese scholar, has translated this novel into Chinese, and the Chinese version of thisnovel is published by Yilin Press. This thesis adopts Steiner’s hermeneutic motiontheory as the theoretical framework and conducts an in-depth analysis on how thetranslation process of the novel The Child in Time can be understood under theguidance of the hermeneutic motion theory. The major translation strategies thetranslator has adopted are also summarized. This thesis aims at implementing a casestudy of the Chinese translation of the novel The Child in Time under the theoreticalframework of Steiner’s hermeneutic motion theory so as to thoroughly explore howthe four steps of hermeneutic motion are reflected in a specific translation process.The purpose is to obtain an in-depth understanding of the hermeneutic motion theory.The important translation strategies are also discovered and collected, which may beinstructional and enlightening to other translators.In this thesis, an overview of the history of Hermeneutics is provided, and thenatural tie between Hermeneutics and translation studies is analyzed. The theoreticalframework is established through explanation of the concrete details of the four stepsof the hermeneutic motion as well as the relationships among the four steps. Themethod of case study is selected in this thesis; therefore, under the guidance ofSteiner’s hermeneutic motion theory, a case study is conducted on the Chinesetranslation of the novel The Child in Time. This case study reveals the detailedrepresentation of the hermeneutic motion in the translation process of this novel, withabundant examples provided to serve as evidence. Then the thesis summarizes themain translation strategies that the translator has adopted in the translation process ofthis novel, because the adoption of these translation strategies contributesconsiderably to the success of this translation work. Through this research, it has become clear that under the guidance of Steiner’shermeneutic motion theory, the translation process of this novel can be summarized ina logical way. First, the translator’s trust in the reasonableness and the significance ofthe source text is the precondition on which the translation act can be started. Thetranslator’s aggression of the source text can be reflected at the linguistic level and thestylistic level. When the translator incorporates the content and forms extracted fromthe source text into the target text, the translator adheres to an overall principle andimplements various incorporating tactics. The final step of restitution is indispensablefor the adequacy of the translation and the equilibrium between the source languagesystem and the target language system. The translator’s compensatory act can befound at the lexical level, the grammatical level, and the textual level.This research demonstrates that the four steps of the hermeneutic motion are allreflected in the Chinese translation of the novel The Child in Time, and that this theorycompletely explains the translator’s translation process. This research also discoversthe major translation strategies that the translator has adopted in the translationprocess, and these strategies prove to be vital to the assurance of the readability andsmoothness of the translation.