Translator's Subjectivity From The Perspective Of Paul Ricoeur's Linguistic Hospitality

Translator's subjectivity is an important research topic in translation studies.In the 17 th century,Descartes proposed “I think,therefore I am”,which marked the awakening of human subjectivity.Human beings no longer focus simply on the exploration of the outside world,but also begin to seek the understanding of the inner self.The philosopher Kant first raised the issue of subjectivity,taking cognitive initiative as the function of the thinking subject who can recognize and transform the object from its own perspective.The problem of inter-subjectivity arose when Fichte discovered the dialectical relationship between self and non-self.Husserl,a German philosopher,put forward inter-subjectivity as a philosophical issue for the first time,and his research on subjectivity has realized a qualitative leap from focusing on the relationship between subject and object to the relationship between subject and subject.Later philosophers,such as Schleiermacher,Heidegger,Gadamer and Ricoeur,turned to the study of subjectivity and inter-subjectivity,the subjectivity of oneself and that of another.With the coming of the cultural turn in 1970 s,the focus of translation studies has gradually shifted from the linguistic perspectives to the cultural ones.The most representative translation theories are the emergence of post-modern translation theories,such as deconstruction,feminism and post-colonialism.Other schools of thought,such as the manipulation school and the skopos theory,have injected new ideas into the issue of translator's subjectivity in translation theory,but these schools of thought have their own shortcomings to some degree.Later on,hermeneutic theories began to prevail in the study of translator's subjectivity.The typical representatives are Gadamer's theory on the fusion of horizon,Steiner's four-step translation theory,and Paul Ricoeur's philosophical hermeneutics.After the reform and opening up,China introduced a large number of western translation theories and research methods,and the discussion of translator's subjectivity in the westernacademic circle also attracted the attention of domestic scholars.As a result,over the past thirty years or so,a lot which mainly discussed the subjectivity of translation,translator's subjectivity and inter-subjectivity has been done by Chinese scholars to examine translator's subjectivity by borrowing theories from the western world.However,due to the complexity of translation itself and the difference in the perspectives adopted by different scholars,as well as the new translation phenomena that are constantly impacting our existing understanding about the nature and features of translation practice,further efforts need to be made to look into the issue of translator's subjectivity from a more comprehensive perspective both theoretically and methodologically.Based on Ricoeur's principle of linguistic hospitality,this thesis explores the construction of translator's subjectivity in poetry translation from the two access routes of inter-lingual translation and intra-lingual translation and the three units of words,sentences and texts put forward by Ricoeur in his theoretical discussion about translation studies.Through data collecting,chart analysis,comparative research and experiential summary of previous studies,this research makes a study of five Chinese versions of “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth,with an aim to(1)introduce new understandings and discoveries about philosophical hermeneutics to translation studies and help translators get rid of the awkward dilemma of translatability and untranslatability;(2)prove that linguistic hospitality can provide theoretical principles and practical translation strategies for the contradictions encountered in the study of translator's subjectivity;(3)affirm Ricoeur's achievements in philosophical studies of translation,and therefore provide more research perspectives for translation studies;(4)analyze the construction of translator's subjectivity in the translation of Wordsworth's poem from the perspective of linguistic hospitality,in the hope of finding a way about how to construct translator's subjectivity in the translation of such poems.Key points of this study include(1)finding out the words,sentences and texts(sentence sequences)and the corresponding translations;(2)evaluating the different ways that construct translator's subjectivity in different Chinese versions of “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” from two access routes of translation paradigms under linguistic hospitality,as well as the reasons for and significance of such differences.It is found that in the translation of Wordsworth's poem,the translators have adopted the strategies of changing the part of speech and omitting some of the words used by the source text to cater for the reading habits of the target readers.In addition,some translators have used domestication and changed the order of sentences in their target texts.This study has two significances.Theoretically,through the perspective of linguistic hospitality,the study carried out in this thesis will offer some insights into the construction of translator's subjectivity in the translation of similar poems,which supplements to some extent previous theoretical endeavors to examine the construction of translator's subjectivity.In terms of translation practice,firstly,linguistic hospitality emphasizes a crucial openness of oneself to another in the construction of subjectivity,which can avoid the extremes of linguistic nationalism and chauvinism in translation practice.Secondly,Ricoeur's hermeneutics insists that the shortest way to reach the subject is through the other.Hence,translators need to have a thorough understanding of the source text and the original environment of its production,making the translation of the source text or the production of the target text closer to the original text and achieving harmonious coexistence.Finally,this study will offer some guidance to similar studies on translator's subjectivity.