Study On Translator's Subjectivity In Lin Shu's Translation

Lin Shu (1852-1924), a highly influential translator of western literary works into Chinese, was a monolingual who had to rely heavily on his collaborators in his translation. During the last years of his life, he was severely attacked for his stubborn defense of classical Chinese, his conservative political position, his unfaithfulness, and his mistake-ridden translations. However, his translations were still welcomed by his contemporary readers and caused tremendous social impact.Most of the researches into Lin's translation were carried out through traditional linguistic approach and some through political approach. The deficiencies in the political approach have already been pointed out. The traditional translation study focuses on the analysis of linguistic transformation and put the principle of'faithfulness to the original'on the first place. In the static text-centered studies, the translator's subjectivity has been almost completely neglected. The cultural turn of translation study in 1970s has brought out translator's subjectivity to the foregrounding position. At present, the subject has become a hot issue in translation studies. The author's investigation shows that although there are fragmentary comments on Lin's purpose and his target readers, systematic analyses have not been made by now. With the development of the subject, researches into Lin's translation, the phenomenon of certain society and culture are certain to get deepened.The thesis consists of four chapters in addition to an introduction and a conclusion. The introduction gives a sketch of the aim, methodology and significance of the thesis.Chapter one offers a brief literature review of Lin Shu's translation. The criticisms of his translation have largely been negative. Some condemn that his translations are not faithful because of the casual addition, deletion and alteration while others highlight political issues. The author intends to bypass such narrow approaches and make an objective judgment of Lin's translation by studying translator's subjectivity.Chapter two recognizes the importance of translator's subjectivity, establishes translator as the translation subject in the thesis and gives a definition to translator's subjectivity. It also offers the theoretical nutrition that the current research can absorb.Chapter three proves that Lin's translating process is nothing different from other translators except his reading source texts by oral texts. Then the author manifests translator's subjectivity in Lin Shu's translation from four aspects such as the original selection, translation techniques, textual form and translation purpose.Based on Lefevere's view of constraint, chapter four makes a detailed analysis of ideological, poetological factors that manipulate Lin Shu. As regards the ideological constraints, three types of ideology are categorized, namely the political, ethical and religious ideologies. The poetological part contains studies on social view of fiction and literary norms. Other constraints such as the source text and source culture are also mentioned.The conclusion summarizes the contents of the thesis, points out its limitations and gives some suggestions for futher study.