A Study Of Translation Intersubjectivity From Communicative Action Theory

As the cream of Chinese culture over 5000 years, Chinese classics are one of the significant tools introducing China to the world. Chinese classics not only contain various literature styles, but also cover a broad range of themes, some of which even exert influence on the forming of Chinese national spirits.As an origin of Chinese literature, Chu Ci leaves behind great treasures for Chinese literature. It is the earliest romanticist work in history which conveys patriotic emotion of its author with abundant content and expressive styles. This thesis investigates translation intersubjectivity in Zhuo Zhenying’s English translation of Chu Ci, "Library of Chinese Classics:The Verse of Chu " with the theoretical framework of communicative action.The concept of intersubjectivity is first presented by German philosopher Husserl. Hereafter, with intense discussion of Heidegger, Gadamer, Habermas and other scholars, intersubjectivity is finally developed into a mature academic field. Intersubjectivity is the extension and perfection of subjectivity study, which concerns communication between subjects of equal importance and aims at mutual understanding of participators. Although intersubjectivity originates from philosophy study, the application of it is not limited to philosophy field. The concept of intersubjectivity is also introduced into other fields of social science, one of which is translation studies. With the prevailing of translation subjectivity study, the interrelation between translation subjects is emphasized for the purpose of improving the quality of translated works.Translation subjectivity refers to the interaction of translation subjects, including translator, original author, target reader and even patronage. Centralizing the role of translator, intersubjectivity study proposes methods of communicating with other subjects equally, in order to pursue every demand of each participator. Intersubjectivity study provides a new prospective for the application of translation ethnics and standardizes the translated text from multi-levels. Based on the criticizing of Gadamer’s hermeneutics. Habermas proposes the theory of communicative action which discusses preconditions of valid communication and requirements of mutual understanding in detail. Grounding on the achievement of communicative rationality, Habermas established a system which regulates communicative action for the purpose of mutual understanding, named "universal pragmatics". Drawn from Habermas’s frameworks, the "life-world" can be separated into three situations, each of them corresponding to a specific communicative action. In addition, he categorizes three validity claims as the norms of rational communicative action, namely truth, rightness, sincerity. In his opinion, the only method to study intersubjectivity is observing communication in the real "life-world" and investigating relationships of social subjects.As a special communicative action, translation subjects definitely need to follow the three validity claims in order to regulate their communicative action. To be specific, the translator should respect the intention of the original author and convey the information provided by original text as much as possible; He needs to canvass emotion of the author between the lines and express it to the reader in target language. Meanwhile, the translator is required to respect the social norms and literature principles in original culture. As to original author, he is obliged to provide true information and sincere emotion in original text according to accepted social norms. For the sake of target readers, the translator needs to consider the cultural background of target reader and chooses those translation strategies which facilitate the comprehension of the reader. Not only expression, the literature principles in target culture should also be respected and followed. The reader should try his best to understand what information the translator intends to convey with his utterances and what emotion the translator wants to arouse through translated text. Moreover, the translator can regard preface and postscript as the platform of communicating with readers by means of conveying his translation strategies and introduce the background knowledge of the original work. Meanwhile, communication between translator and patronage should not be neglected as well. On the one hand, patronage should respects the original text and avoid illogical intervention in the translator’s work with illogical requests. On the other hand, translator needs to meet the rational demand of the patronage and treat translation activity from different aspects.This thesis follows such structure:The first chapter explains the background and significance of research, methodology of descriptive qualitative study as well as three research questions of this article. Chapter Two focuses on the definition of key concepts in this study and gives a review of previous achievements. Chapter Three is the theoretical frameworks of this thesis, which states the theory of communicative action presented by Habermas in details and expatiates how Habermas’s frameworks guide translation intersubjectivity study. Chapter Four provides a case study which analyzes "Library of Chinese Classics:The Verse of Chu" to explain the significance of translation intersubjectivity and how to reach the mutual understanding and rational communication of translator, patronage, author and target reader. The last chapter concludes major findings and limitations in this research; meanwhile, several suggestions are also presented for further development of Chinese classic translation.From the simple analysis in this thesis, it’s expected that translation intersubjectivity study will promote development of Chu Ci translation, and it will contributes to further researches of Chinese classic translation with thoughtful ideas.