On The Obtrusion Of Translators In Literary Translation

Translation has been a human activity over two thousand years and has made great contributions to the communication and development of mankind. But compared with its long history, people's scientific studies on the process, nature, and the theoretical frame of translation seems too far from satisfactory. Translation studies in its modern sense began in the 1950s with the appearance of machine translation. Its theoretical construction started in the 70s of the 20th century with the development of linguistics and philosophy and with the help of other approaches such as sociology, aesthetics, logics, and anthropology. During this period, some long neglected questions have attracted new attention, for example, the study of the translator. For the role of the translator, translation theorists and experienced translators have expressed various ideas, among which the most representative ones comparing the translator to the conqueror, painter, matchmaker, Prometheus, cannibal are reviewed in this dissertation. On the obtrusion of translators, the traditional idea is that in the process of translation, translators should try their best to avoid the subjective involvement without the consideration that they at first are individuals. Therefore, this paper, on the foundation of translation process, aims at discussing the inevitability of translators' obtrusion which refers to the subjective traces of translators in the final translation works. The author first analyzes the characteristics of the translator from philosophy and translation. Then, the obtrusion of translators in literary translation is argued in detail from the choices on source text, the interpretation to the determination of translation strategies and the expression. In conclusion, the author holds the idea that since the obtrusion of translators is unavoidable, translators should be encouraged to exert the advantages of it to re-create more excellent translation works with their own features on the thorough investigation of the original.