Translator’s Subjectivity In The Translation Of Works Of He’nan Literary Group

Traditional translation theory stated that translator should be completely faithful to the original author,so translator’s position has been marginalized for a long time.The situation remained unchanged until the cultural turn in western world in 1970 s.After that,translators have been given more and more attention,and studies on translator’s subjectivity have become a hit.However,many Chinese scholars misunderstood translator’s subjectivity by blindly believing that subjectivity equals subject’s subjective initiative and independent choice.Actually,translators exert their subjective initiative in translation activities,meanwhile being restricted by both internal and external factors and showing passivity.The oversea-market of He’nan Literary Group,which has a high reputation in China,doesn’t go well.However,Liu Zhenyun and Yan Lianke are two exceptions,as their works have been translated to other languages and won many foreign readers.Actually,the English version(translated by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin)of Liu’s Wo Bu Shi Pan Jinlian is a groundbreaking move for the reception of Liu Zhenyun’s works abroad;Yan’s Ding Zhuang Meng has been translated to the English world successfully by Cindy Carter,although it’s banned as soon as it’s published in China.The paper tries to analyze how Goldblatt’s and Carter’s subjective initiative influences the successful translation,with two English versions,namely,I Did Not Kill My Husband and Dream of Ding Village,as cases.Meanwhile,this paper focuses on the passivity of translator’s subjectivity,exploring translation phenomena appearing when translators are restricted by other factors.The study finds that I Did Not Kill My Husband and Dream of Ding Village are the combination of translators’ subjective initiative and passivity.In face of folk language including four-character phrases and proverbs in Wo Bu Shi Pan Jinlian,Goldblatt mainly adopts literal translation and foreignization,conveying folk culture to target-text readers.He also adopts equivalence translation and paraphrase;thus the target text would be fluent and readable.At linguistic level,compensation and conversion are used to achieve idiomatic target text.Goldblatt’s choice of Wo Bu Shi Pan Jinlian manifests his subjectivity as well,as he chose the source text on the basis of his personal preference and the market.Ding Zhuang Meng contains abundant figures of speech.Based on concrete contexts,Cindy Carter manages to keep the novel similes of the source texts with literal translation and give free translations to those which cannot be translated with literal translation.She also makes up for enallage of source text that is difficult to be translated.For imitative words with He’nan characteristics,she reproduces them in target text;she even uses supplement method to create imitative words to increase vividness and authenticity of the target text.In addition,she exerts her subjectivity in dealing with color terms and certain images.In a word,the folk color of works of He’nan Literary Group exists in language,culture,figures of speech,etc.Translator’s subjectivity is embodied in maintaining folk color,and focusing on target-text readers’ reading experience.When exerting translator’s subjectivity,translators are limited by their pre-existing cultural structure and bilingual capabilities,leading to mistranslation and deletion.