Study On Translators’ Subjectivity From The Perspective Of Eco-translatology

The traditional translation studies only focused on word-to-word transfer, neglecting the factors beyond language level, especially the translator’s own initiative.1970s witnessed the cultural turn in translation studies, injecting other factors beyond linguistics into translation study, under which the study of translator’s subjectivity has been on the rise. This thesis, with eco-translatology as the theoretical basis, is going to study the manifestation of translator’s subjectivity in eco-translatology. Based on the previous numerous studies on translator’s subjectivity both at home and abroad, the connotation of it can be condensed into three points: passiveness, purposiveness and creativity. The translation process, under eco-translatology with translator-centeredness, is divided into two phases, namely, translator’s "selective adaptation" and translator’s "adaptive selection". In the first stage, the qualified translator selected by the eco-translational environment through "survival of the fittest" is subject to the restraints of SL text and SL readers, etc., which is exactly where translator’s passiveness lies. In the second stage, the translator selects corresponding translation strategies out of a certain purpose and then transfers the SL text into the TL text creatively in linguistic, cultural and communicative dimensions for a qualified product. Through detailed analysis, translator’s purposiveness and creativity are embodied in the second phase.Eco-translatology is a cross-disciplinary kind of translation theory from the perspective of ecology. Its theoretical foundation is the theory of "translation adaptation and selection", which takes the basic principle of "adaptation and selection" in Darwinian evolution as its guidance and with translator as the center defines translation process as translator’s multidimensional adaptation and adaptive selection in an "eco-translational environment"."Eco-translational environment" refers to the world presented by the source text and the source/target languages, involving the linguistic, communicative, cultural and social aspects, and the author, readers, etc. This theory, starting from a new perspective to describe and explain translating process, integrates various factors in translating process, such as language, society, culture, communication, etc.Two English versions of Lao Can You Ji were selected as the research data for present study, one was translated by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang and the other version was by Harold Shadick. Both versions are used as a case study to further testify the embodiment of translator’s subjectivity under the eco-translatology. Detailed comparative analysis is done to find out how they wield their own subjectivity and in what ways specifically when translating a kind of travelogue text with rich Chinese cultural color written in China’s late Qing Dynasty.The thesis comes to a result that both Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang as well as Shadick are constrained by such factors as the SL text and SL readers, etc. They adopt different translation strategies out of different purposes, namely, Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang mainly adopt domestication as they consider more of the TL readers’ reception, for which they omitted and abridged a lot of "alien" parts while Shadick, out of his love for and purpose to spread Chinese language and culture, mainly adopts foreignization. To achieve absolute faithfulness to the SL text, Shadick even created some words by himself when encountering some cultural-loaded words with no foreign equivalence like "亲家" rendered into "Kinsman". Then they transfer creatively in linguistic, cultural and communicative dimensions to different degrees, exerting their subjectivity to a full play and producing two entirely different qualified products. This thesis also gives a summary to their translation strategies in hope of providing some reference for later studies.