On The Translator's Subjectivity Of David Hawkes By The Paratextual Study Of The Story Of The Stone

The translator, the subject of translation, has been in a peripheral situation in translation studies for a long time. Since the advent of “Cultural Turn” from 1980 s, the study of the translator has gained due attention and become one important part of translation history and translation studies. The subjective initiatives of the translator manifested in translating is termed as the translator's subjectivity, which runs through the whole translation activity. The study of the translator's subjectivity can contribute to the in-depth exploration of the translator but most of the current studies just focus on the inner translated texts.The French literary theorist Gérard Genette coined the term “paratext” in 1970 s. In recent ten years, paratext has been applied to the study of translated literature. Paratexts, a major historical resource for the study of translation history, refer to the devices and conventions within and outside the translated work. An integrated translated literary work is the assembly of the text and all relevant paratexts. Paratexts can be further divided into peritexts and epitexts according to their spatial location.As the first published English version of the 80 chapters, Hawkes' s The Story of the Stone promoted the rapid spread of Hong Lou Meng in English world. Hawkes himself even was widely recognized as one of the top-ranking scholars in the area of Hong Lou Meng translation studies and Redology. The researches on David Hawkes have made remarkable achievements while most of the studies are just from the view of the translated text or the employment of one or two paratextual elements. The abundant paratextual elements of The Story of the Stone provide vast historical information about the translator, which is indispensable to fully demonstrate the marginalized translation phenomena of the translated text and explore the translator's subjectivity of Hawkes accurately. Based on the paratextual theory of Genette, this paper intends to unearth relevant paratexts of The Story of the Stone in a comprehensive and diachronical way, and probes into the translator's subjectivity from three dimensions: translation purpose, translation strategies and translation process with the help of peritexts and epitexts as well as the translated text. Therefore, it is hoped that readers can have an objective understanding of the translator David Hawkes. Out of the profound understanding and the inspiration, Hawkes made up his mind to translate Hong Lou Meng and produce a complete English version with favorable readability. Due to the deep affection to Hong Lou Meng, Hawkes adhered to follow the principle of faithfulness to the original work and ensure target readership. Meanwhile, he employed the skills of amplification, omission and substitution to guarantee the readability of the novel and promote the circulation of the novel. Hong Lou Meng, one charming Chinese novel, itself has many different editions. As for Hawkes, he mainly adopted Gao E's version published by People's Literature Publishing House in 1964. He also recreated the Chinese edition with reference of many other editions and the integration of his own creativity. With ten-year painstaking efforts, The Story of the Stone finally came out and won him world recognition.Finally, the author holds the opinion that paratexts should be one important perspective for the study of the translator and translation history. Against the backdrop of promoting Chinese culture and the strategy of “The Belt and Road Initiative”, this study can shed some lights for the English translation of Chinese literary classics.