On Translator’s Subjectivity In Literary Translation

Literary translation is translating a literary work from a language into another language. It is a media for communication and cultural transmission between people who have different language and cultural environment. Mr. Lu Xun, a famous Chinese litterateur, once said that translation must give consideration to two aspects: one is strive to make the translation easy to understand; the other one is keep the style and characteristics of the original text. This is what a literary translation should realize. Except for convey its content, we need to focus on the style and characteristics of the literary work, because it is one of the key factors of a literary work. Without it, the translation will be meaningless. This makes a moderately high request for the translator.All of these years, a lot of people simply ask the translator to meet some basic requirements, such as fully grasp related knowledge of the source language, proficiently use target language and be familiar with knowledge of related areas, etc. Research on translation mainly focuses on whether the target language is accordant with the source language, but the translator is regarded as an invisible tool. This has greatly weakened the importance of translator’s subjectivity and lowered his position. Till now, there are still a lot of people regard the translator as an imitator who imitates the original text in a different language, but ignore the translator’s subjectivity and its role in the literary translation. Literary translation contains abundant aesthetic information. This requires the literary translator not only to precisely convey basic meaning of the original text, but also give full play to his subjectivity and creativity, so as to show the aesthetic information and do an excellent translation.In recent years, more and more people start to study on the translator’s subjectivity in translation, through which we can see the focus studies is turning to the translator’s role in translation. This thesis divides the translation process into three parts, before translation, in translation and after translation, so as to talk about the translator’s subjectivity in the whole process of literary translation, and points out that creativity and individuality are the main aspects of the translator’s subjectivity. A literary translator should possess the sense of creation and give full play to his creativity, too. The translator plays a decisive role in the literary translation. However, the translator’s subjectivity is not absolute. It is restricted by the author, reader and some other factors of the translator himself, which will be discussed in the latter part of the thesis.At the same time of the theoretical study, this thesis takes Red Star Over China which is translated from English to Chinese by Dong Leshan for instance to do translation practice research. Dong Leshan is quite an accomplished writer and translator. His translation of Red Star Over China manifests the translator’s subjectivity in the literary translation incisively and vividly. Therefore, the author selects this book to support the argument and research of the thesis.