On Translatability Of Literary Works From The Perspective Of Hermeneutics

Distinguished from translation techniques like "direct translation" or "free translation", translatability is a fundamental issue in translation theory. It refers to the feature that a language can be translated into another one. Untranslatability does not mean the text cannot be translated but means whether the original text can be reproduced loyally and accurately. It has always been a controversy that the original text is translatable or untranslatable in translation study. Scholars have studied this issue from many different angles. There are three main views on the issue of translatability. Scholars who hold the first view think that translation is completely possible. Scholars who hold the second view think that translation is completely impossible. Scholars who hold the third view think that translatability is relative. They propose that there exist obstructions to channels of inter-lingual information transfer, namely the limit of translatability, though most translations are possible.As a branch of philosophy, hermeneutics is a subject for text understanding and interpretation. Since hermeneutics is fundamentally connected with translation, it has been extensively applied to translation theory studies. Discussing translatability from the perspective of hermeneutics is meaningful. However researchers who apply hermeneutics to translation study concentrate on translators’ subjectivity and inter-subjectivity, and discussions of translatability from the perspective of hermeneutics are rare. Wuthering Heights was translated into China in1930s. Published by Ping Ming Press In1955, Yang Yi’s translation of Wuthering Heights gained enormous attention and then was deemed as a classic version. There has come a climax of translating classic Western literary works since1980s with the pace of Reform and Opening-up. Many translators have translated Wuthering Heights. Consequently many researchers have studied the translation of Wuthering Heights from different perspectives including translation style, translator’s subjectivity and feminism. Studies of translatability of Wuthering Heights are scarce. As a mysterious literary work, Wuthering Heights is praised as a poetic masterpiece. It is full of spots of indeterminancy and blanks and therefore it is very appropriate for researchers to study it from the perspective of hermeneutics.The first part of this paper is literature review, In this part, the author clarifies key concepts including origin of hermeneutics, relationship between hermeneutics and translation, translatability, untranslatability and limit of translatability. The second part is theoretical foundation for this paper. The author connects main theories of objective hermeneutics and subjective hermeneutics with translatability organically. In short, the scholars of objective hermeneutics confirm the existence of text’s meaning and author’s intention. They hold that text’s meaning and author’s intention are static and fixed. Therefore translation is definitely possible. With the turn from objective hermeneutics to subjective hermeneutics, scholars from philosophical hermeneutics hold that interpretation/translation is a process of fusion of horizons between the source language text’s horizon, translator’s horizon and target language’s horizon. The text is open and dynamic, and its meaning is not fixed. As a result, translatability is relative. This part provides the theoretical foundation for this paper. In the third part, the author uses the theory of fusion of horizons from philosophical hermeneutics to compare two Chinese versions of Wuthering Heights. Firstly the author briefly introduces Wuthering Heights’translation and acceptance in China. Secondly the author specifically analyzes the source language text’s horizon, two translators’ horizon and target readers’horizon, In the comparative study part, the author firstly demonstrates translatability of Wuthering Heights with theories and examples. And then the author uses the theory of fusion of horizons to compare how two translators dispose of limit of translatability. Through the comparative study, the following conclusions are reached:(1) through translators’active fusion of horizons, the limit of translatability can be eliminated to some extent. Due to two translators’ different degree of fusion of horizons, two translators adopt different strategies to deal with fusion of horizons;(2) since the process of fusion of horizons is historical and dynamic, there are a few mistranslations in both translators’translations. Therefore the re-translation of classic literary works is necessary.In the last part, the author summarizes this paper and come to some conclusions. And further direction of this study is proposed based on limitation of this study.