The Manifestation Of Translator’s Subjectivity In Cultural Translation

The traditional translation theories consider translation as interlanguage transformation and the translator’s task is to faithfully convey the meanings and forms of the original works, so the traditional translation researches on the translator are confined at the linguistic level and the translator’s subjectivity in text creation is obscured. In the 1990s, the "cultural turn" emerged in translation field, forming cultural translation theories of target language culture, which has provided theoretical support for the researches on translator’s subjectivity.The English commentary of A Bite of China, produced by CCTV in 2012, has aroused heated discussion at abroad, which serves as a window to introduce Chinese diverse dietary culture and local customs to the world. In the process of translation, the translator fully plays the subjectivity to endow English commentary with profound significance of cultural communication and reconstructs China’s cultural image at the world cultural stage.The research question is that how translator’s subjectivity can be manifested in cultural translation. After summarizing the connotation of translator’s subjectivity, defined by scholars at home and abroad, the thesis discusses passivity, initiativeness and purposiveness and their relationship in cultural translation. Different from previous studies that focus on the specific translators and their translated literary works, this thesis takes the English commentary of A Bite of China as the case study and divides the main content of cultural information into material culture, institutional culture and ideological culture. By adopting a descriptive-explanatory method, it compares Chinese and English commentary and analyzes the manifestation of translator’s subjectivity, namely how the translator conquers the passivity, exerts initiativeness and achieves the purpose. At last the thesis comes to the conclusion that in cultural translation, translator’s subjectivity can be adequately manifested by conquering cultural differences, employing various translation strategies and methods to transform the cultural information and fulfilling the goal to make audiences receive and absorb Chinese cultures.