On The Moral Identity Of The Translator

Values, morals, and ethics form the foundation for interactions inany culture. As an important channel of intercultural communication,translation, with its interlingual, interpersonal, and intercultural"in-between" property, inherently implies an ethical dimension andmakes an ethical reflection a natural necessity. As a response to theabove-mentioned facts, discussions on translation ethics begin to emergeand spread. In the final analysis, ethics serves as an internal motivatingforce sustaining people's action and interpersonal relationship. Therefore,the construction of ethics should revolve round the study on therelationship between action subjects.In translation, the translator is the most important subject whichunder the ethical dimension becomes a moral agent. Since the moralidentity of the translator has "heterogeneous moral sources": individualmorality, social ethics, and professional ethics, it is hybrid in nature. Thehybrid moral identity weaves a complicate and perplexing ethical net forthe translator and brings about not a few ethical issues and problems.Thus the process of translating becomes a process of moraldecision-making.This thesis makes a special effort to investigate the moral identity ofthe translator and attempts to construct a practical and effective moraldecision-making model for the translator. The thesis consists of six parts.In the introduction, by briefly reviewing the achievements in thestudy of translation ethics both at home and broad, the author analyzesthe reasons accounting for "the ethical turn" in Translation Studies andargues that an ethical examination of the translator should be givenpriority and emphasis in the construction of translation ethics.Chapter One deals with the ethical dimension of translation throughan ontological analysis of the respective nature of ethics and translationand outlines the location, scope, and current development of translationethics.Chapter Two puts forward the concept of the translator's moral identity and points out its inherent hybridity. In the basic sense, thetranslator is an independent individual, whose innate disposition, culturaland social background, personal experience, and so on and so forth, makehis/her personal morality as unique and idiosyncratic as any one else.Besides, the translator does not live in a vacuum but belongs to certainsociety and era. It seems impossible for him/her to escape being boundedor influenced by the social moral norms. Furthermore, translation hasbeen greatly industrialized and professionalized in recent years. Thestandardization and development of the translation profession call for thestipulation of professional ethics which surely has moral bearings on thetranslator. These ethical sources in joint force shape the hybrid moralidentity of the translator.Some scholars have made some initial inquiries into the moraldecision-making in translation, and most of them derive from two basicbranches of moral philosophy: deontology and utilitarianism. With a viewto the limitations of each approach, the author proposes in Chapter Threea framework of ethical decision-making in translation and presents itsguiding principles and basic procedures.The last chapter reflects upon the constant moral virtues of thetranslator. Taking into consideration the role of the translator and the taskof the translation activity, the author argues that the translator's virtuesinclude but are not limited to the following three: honesty, respect, andresponsibility. Their ontological meaning and specific connotation in thetranslation activity are discussed respectively.In the conclusion, the author briefly reviews the arguments of thethesis and points out the practical value and theoretical significance of theresearch to translation and Translation Studies.