A Modern Philosophical Hermeneutic Approach To Lin Shu’s Translation Of David Copperfield

By setting down the dictation of his cooperated interpreters, Lin Shu published his firsttranslating work La Dame aux Camlias in1899; from then on, the image on foreign novels wastotally changed in Chinese people’s mind. Thus, novel translations prevailed all over the country(Chen Pingyuan,1989:28). Applying this unique translation method, Lin Shu translated morethan one hundred and eighty foreign works in total. In his mind, Kuai Rou Yu Sheng Shu was oneof the translations he worked with most care and also one of his best translations. Due to thelarge number of accomplishments, Lin Shu was greatly valued in Chinese translation history.There was even a nice remark going like this:“Yan and Lin were both talents in translation field”(Wang Hongzhi,2007:199). However, Lin Shu’s translation received quite a lot of criticism atthe meantime. In the source-oriented translation period, fictions translated by Lin Shu were oftenbadly considered to be unfaithful or full of mistranslations and omissions. Why did such aseverely criticized translation still receive warm welcome at that time?The author introduced Andre Lefevere’s conception of “rewriting” into this thesis. That is,“rewriting is a genre that includes interpretation, criticism, anthologizing, as well as translation”.Hermeneutics is the science of understanding and interpretation. It was first used in theinterpretation of Bible, and later Gadamer, together with other German philosophers, developedit into a complete system called modern philosophical hermeneutics. This theory proposes manysignificant and valuable concepts concerning translation study, such as “prejudice”,“historicityof understanding”,“fusion of horizons” and “effective history”, which provide brand newperspectives for translation study. According to Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics,translation is realized through the dialogues between translator and the source-text author,between translator and the target readers. The theory is useful in that it encourages a certainamount of freedom from too narrow a view of the source text and this can be an aid to creativity.In this way, different layers of meaning of the text will be dug out and understanding will bemore profound. By applying hermeneutics, we can get rid of the confine of source text on theone hand, justifying the existence of rewriting; on the other hand, we can avoid beingoverstressed on the translator’s subjectivity.This thesis conducts an analysis of rewriting in Lin Shu’s Kuai Rou Yu Sheng Shu from twoaspects. On the one hand, the author classifies the rewriting examples according to differentideational cultural factors and then tries to analyze and interpret the causes behind them underthe guidance of “prejudice” theory in modern hermeneutics. On the other hand, the authorreveals the dialogues hidden in the process of hermeneutic translation: dialogue betweentranslator and the source-text author as well as dialogue between translator and the target readers.Through case studies, this thesis draws the conclusion that rewriting in Lin Shu’s Kuai Rou YuSheng Shu is the result of the maximum fusion of horizons between translator and the source-textauthor, between translator and the target readers. Thus, Lin Shu’s translation of DavidCopperfield is a justifiable rewriting and reasonable translation.