"The Marionette":The Manifestations Of Translator's Subjectivity In Literary Translation

Through the long translation history which lasts for more than 2,000 years home and abroad, the translation studies before 1950s focused on the transfer of source texts to target texts. The years after 1960s have witnessed the shift of translation studies to translated texts and translators.For a long time, the translation theories were focusing on the source texts only and arguing that the most excellent translation was the one in accordance with the original author's thoughts and ideas, never considering translators and translated texts. The late 1980s saw the emergence of "cultural turn" in translation studies, then the translators' positions become the focus of translation studies. Since then, the translator's subjectivity has become one of the important issues in translation studies.Uncle Tom's Cabin was written by Harriet Beecher Stowe and the story in this book had a great impact on the history of America. At that time, the United States was in a frenzy about the problem of slavery. The novel Uncle Tom's cabin was like a heavy bomb, impressively shocked the American society and played an important role in the civil war afterwards. There are three typical Chinese versions of the Uncle Tom's Cabin, which refer to Lin Shu and Wei Yi's version, Huang Jizhong's version and Wang Jiaxiang's version. These three versions, though published in different periods with different styles, have won praise from readers and resonated with readers.The thesis analyzes the manifestations of translator's subjectivity in literary translation and the reasons why translators have different choices in their translations. Although there are many studies conducted on this issue, little studies were focusing on the contemporary bestsellers in which the translator's subjectivity has more significant manifestations. This thesis conducts a comparative study on the three Chinese versions of the Uncle Tom's Cabin, which refer to Lin Shu and Wei Yi's version, Huang Jizhong's version and Wang Jiaxiang's version,aiming at probing into the importance of translator's subjectivity in translation. Translation is a language decoding activity mainly conducted by a translator. As the translation standard varies from person to person, different translators may hold different preferences against the same source text. Therefore, studies on different translations of the same source text are of great significance for promoting the development of translation's variety, which contributes to the emerge of "all flowers blossoming" in translation industry.