On Translator's Subjectivity In The Chinese Version Of River Town By Li Xueshun From A Hermeneutic Perspective

The translator,the subject of the translation activity,was marginalized for quite a long time in translation studies and changed by the “culture turn” in the 1970 s.Since then translation studies have shifted away from the text to the broader context and the role and status of the translator have begun to be recognized and improved.Translator's subjectivity has thereby become the focus of translation studies at home and abroad.Along with the “culture turn”,new major translation theories have emerged and made great strides,such as deconstructionism,the poly-system theory,the skopos theory,the rewriting theory,as well as hermeneutics.Even though there is no specific theory related to the study of translator's subjectivity,hermeneutics is inexorably connected with translation as hermeneutic theorists argue that translation is interpretation.The representative hermeneutic theorist,George Steiner,put forward the fourfold hermeneutic motion,laying out a logic and systematic road map guiding the study of translator's subjectivity.This thesis adopts Steiner's hermeneutic motion as the theoretical framework supplemented by some concepts of other translation theories,and takes Li Xueshun's Chinese version of River Town as the research text.It probes into translator's subjectivity at four stages — “Trust”,“Aggression”,“Incorporation” and “Compensation” through a large amount of comparison and contrast between the original text and the translated one from a critical point of view.The thesis delves into how external constraints such as ideology and patronage,and internal factors of the translator affect his subjectivity in the translation process.The thesis finds translator's trust comes from his purpose,linguistic competence and readiness,which exert impact on his subjectivity in return;at the second move of aggression,the translator changes the original text through adaptation and deletion,and this deliberate act embodies his subjectivity;at incorporation,the translator bridges different languages and cultures through assimilation of meaning and language style,giving full play to his subjectivity;at the move of compensation,the translator made up for the imbalance at the first three moves and added more to the target text through footnotes and embedded addition,prolonging the life of the original book.However,there are many deficiencies in the translation due to translator's ignorance of the unconscious intervention and overly displayed subjectivity,which should be guarded against in translation.