Analysis Of Translator's Subjectivity As Exemplified In Howard Goldblatt's English Version Of Tales Of Hulan River

A translator's subjectivity is conditional and limited.It is indeed the binary combination of his subjective initiative together with his subjective passivity.However,most scholars pay more attention to translator's initiative and pretermit translator's subjective passivity.As a result,existing investigations on translator's subjectivity,peculiarly his subjective passivity are lacking.Furthermore,the plurality of the few investigations are merely to investigate translator's passivity in theory and few people go further to examine particular illustrations.Therefore,this thesis assumes translator's subjectivity as the research center,endeavoring to probe into its connotation in a comprehensive way.Howard Goldblatt,an American translator who possesses intense interest in Chinese literature,favors Xiao Hong most.To Goldblatt,Hulanhe Zhuan is one of his favorite novels and he also deems it as Xiao Hong's "most personal and artistic creation" and "a lasting testimony to her artistic genius"(Goldblatt,1979:xxv).It is full of Chinese idioms,dialects,vulgarism and common sayings in Hulanhe Zhuan,resulting in plenty troubles for the translator to picture the original flavor of the source text,thus the translator,Howard Goldblatt,is supposed to develop his subjectivity in rendering those Chinese local dialects and picturing local culture.However,the investigations from the side of translator's subjectivity are inadequate,thus,this thesis selects Xiao Hong's Hulanhe Zhuan as the case investigation to demonstrate Howard Goldblatt's subjectivity from two aspects:subjective initiative and subjective passivity.From a comprehensive analysis,it proves that Goldblatt adequately and comprehensively displays his subjectivity in Tales of Hulan River.The simplification of complicated words and sentences,the rearrangement of sentences and textual structures,the representation of dialects,together with Goldblatt's creativity and initiative in voicing the original flavor of the ecological culture,material culture,social culture,linguistic culture and religious culture are the cogent manifestation of Goldblatt's initiative.However,limited and restricted by some inevitable internal and external factors,he unwillingly displays his passivity in voicing some cultural and colloquial expressions,resulting in the loss of the cultural and the colloquial color to some extent and undermining the distinct flavor of Hulanhe Zhuan.Through the analysis of Goldblatt's subjectivity,both his initiative and passivity,in Tales of Hulan River,the present author wishes that this thesis can be guested as a replenishment to the investigation of Tales of Hulan River as same as translator's subjectivity.