A Study On Translator’s Subjectivity In The English Version Of The Family From The Perspective Of George Steiner’s Hermeneutic Motion Theory

The Family is one of Pa Chin’s masterpieces,"The Turbulent Stream Trilogy",which profoundly influences modern Chinese literature history.It is an excellent realist work that exposes the decadence and evil of a large feudal family in the early 20th century.The novel denounces the destruction of the feudal system in this society,praises the young people of the old era with new thoughts,and celebrates their resistance and struggle against the feudal society.Published in 1958,Shapiro’s English translation of The Family has had a considerable impact on European and American literature,and its unique perspective has attracted many readers.It is well known that literature plays an essential role in spreading culture,and foreign translations of literary works allow the voice of China to spread in the world.Therefore,studying the translation of literary works helps to combine literature and translation better,bring high-quality translations to the outside world,and thus spread excellent culture.Hermeneutics is originally a philosophical discipline about interpretation,and there is a close connection between it and translation.The translation itself is a process of interpretation,which fully reflects the subjectivity of the translator,so hermeneutics provides a possibility for the study of the subjectivity of the translator.George Steiner first combined translation and hermeneutics to explore how the process of interpretation works in translation.According to the hermeneutic motion theory,he divided translation into four steps-trust,aggression,incorporation and compensation-each of which can reflect how the translator’s subjectivity plays a role in the translation process.The first step in George Steiner’s hermeneutics is trust,where the translator’s choice of work for translation means that he believes in its translation value;for differences in language and cultural background,the translator cannot help but intrude into the original text according to his understanding;in the absorption stage,the translator flexibly uses translation strategies to integrate his knowledge of the original text with the original author’s intentions;for the loss of information brought about by the first three stages,the translator takes measures to compensate for the original text and avoid the imbalance between the original text and the translation.This paper takes the four steps of translation proposed by George Steiner as the theoretical basis and takes the English translation of Pa Chin’s The Family as the object of study.It adopts the documentary analysis method,the comparative study method,and the case study method to explore how the translator exerts the subjectivity of the translator in the four aspects of trust,aggression,incorporation,and compensation in the translation process.Through the analysis of the translated text,it is found that in the English translation of Shapiro’s The Family,the differences between the two cultural backgrounds and languages have an impact on the translation process and the subjectivity played by the translator in the interpretation process can all be reflected in Steiner’s four steps.The author believes that the play of the translator’s subjectivity in the translation process elevates the translation process to the cultural level and preserves the cultural characteristics of the source language to the greatest extent,which is conducive to promoting Chinese literature to go out further and also provides certain experience and reference for future translations of Chinese literary works.