On Translator’s Subjectivity In The Translation Of The Transactions

The translator has been restrained by the criterion of faithfulness in translation and many other assumptions such as the translator’s invisibleness over a long period of time. As a result, translators’active roles or their subjectivity in the process of translation are largely neglected. It was not until the 1970s that there occurred a "Cultural Turn" in the Western academia bringing various new translation studies that combine both interdisciplinary approaches and translation theories. In consequence, ever since the subjectivity of a translator has become a focus of translation studies.The translator’s subjectivity means that the translator should act creatively in the process of translation and his or her uniqueness in the choice of translation strategies and methods should be emphasized. However, the translator’s subjectivity is not used at will. Instead, it is restricted by several factors such as the source text, the target text, the cultural background of both source and target orientations. There is no exception in literary translation.This thesis analyses manifestation of translator’s subjectivity in the translation of character description and culture-loaded words in the novel Transactions written by contemporary Australian writer Ali Alizadeh. On the one hand, it examines how a translator acts while translating descriptions of features and mental process in terms of characterization; On the other hand, it further explores a translator’s subjectivity in the translation of culture-loaded words including both social and material culture-loaded words. It is argued that one can turn to free translation when translating character description, for it often aims at a minute depiction of characters which implies not only appearance of a character but one’s psychological characteristics as well. As for the translation of culture-loaded words, different translation strategies should be adopted to render different situations in which culture-loaded words usually embody both social and material aspects of culture. Since social culture-loaded words are often employed to convey the meaning of social history and political ideology, free translation is required since the context of target language should be taken into consideration. While material culture-loaded words are those that name objects of ethnical characteristics and different kinds of local food which may not have equivalent expressions in the target culture, one has to resort to a method of literal translation. Strategically, a translator can act creatively by applying the methods of addition, adaptation and reduction. In this sense, one is supposed to make his or her own choice accordingly while translating a literary text.