On Understanding And Its Significance To Translation-From The Perspective Of Hermeneutics

Throughout history, scholars in the translation circle at home and abroad have long held various and sometimes opposite views on the subject of translation, particularly when illustrating their translation theories. However, no matter how different their translation theories may be, all of them, without exception, will face the issue of how to validly understand the textual meaning. Further to this, their translation ideas and principles, more or less, have to touch on and even answer the following questions: Does the textual meaning exist? If the textual meaning does exist, can it be determined? Finally, how to properly determine the textual meaning? In fact, it is because of the different understandings of the textual meaning and various approaches to reaching the textual meaning that allow translation theorists and practitioners to form different schools. Hence, a probe into the understanding of textual meaning will be significant to translation studies.Hermeneutics is a discipline that studies understanding and interpretation of textual meaning, and therefore has intrinsic relations with translation. This thesis will make a study of the translators' understanding from the perspective of hermeneutics. There are two major developing stages of hermeneutics. One is general hermeneutics and the other is philosophical hermeneutics. This thesis will illustrate the significance of the thoughts on understanding from these two stages to translation, and describe both their positive and limiting influences on translation.In general hermeneutics, the major representatives Schleiermacher and Dilthey think that understanding is a process of subjective reconstruction of the object. The readers should overcome their subjective restrictions to reconstruct the historical, social and personal context of the author and, in this way, to re-experience the author's psychological process and grasp his intention, thus reaching the textual meaning. If those thoughts are applied to translation, it means that the translators should restrict their views and thoughts about the text, and make efforts to expand their background knowledge about the text and the textual author to access the textual meaning. On the one hand, both Schleiermacher and Dilthey ignore translators' historicality and subjectivity. On the other hand, they advise translators, though subconsciously, to modify their fore-understanding and to re-adjust it to the text, thus attaining the textual meaning in a more objective manner.In philosophical hermeneutics, the major representatives Heidegger and Gadamer illustrate understanding from the perspective of ontology. Heidegger and Gadamer propose that understanding is not a humans' cognitive activity, but merely the mode of their being-in-the-world. Gadamer asserts that understanding is a historical existence, and it is the process of the fusion of the horizons between the text and the reader. If these thoughts are applied to translation, it means that individual translators historically exist; hence it is justified for them to have different understandings of the same text. In this sense, the subjectivity of individual translators is highlighted. Also, the gaps among a translator's horizon, the text's horizon and the target context's horizon entail that translating is interpreting. Yet translating is not free interpreting. It is controlled by the text's horizon and a translator's shared horizon. A translator's shared horizon refers to the knowledge he or she shares with other members in both the source context and the target context. A translator's understanding is the process that he or she constantly controls his or her unique horizon and expands his or her shared horizon to make it fuse with both the text's horizon and the target context's horizon as much as possible. In light of this, translation criteria also undergo some changes. Translation should not only be faithful to the source text but also to the target context. In addition, Gadamer's thoughts on the hermeneutic circle, the temporal distance and the fusion of horizons also justify the existence of re-translation. Despite this, the relativism in philosophical hermeneutics also imposes an unfavorable influence on translation.By describing the understanding in translation from the perspective of hermeneutics, this thesis aims to inspire translators to better interpret the source texts and to produce relatively faithful translations. It also aims to enlighten translators to be able to have a better understanding of the understanding in translation, including its nature, its conditions, and the methods of validly understanding the source textual meaning.