On The Proper Display Of Translator's Subjectivity

The Da Vinci Code is a mystery and detective novel by American author Dan Brown. Having been remaining on the top of the New York Times Bestseller List for the whole 34 weeks since its release in April 2003, The Da Vinci Code is considered to be the most popular book after Harry Porter. Through a comparative study of the two Chinese versions in detail, the author intends to explore the properness of the display of translator's subjectivity and its influence on target text.This thesis starts with a brief introduction of the definition of translator's subjectivity as well as the changes of the translator's position. Traditional translation theory is always limited in the field of textual comparison and language transformation, putting "text-oriented principle" and "author-oriented principle" as the rigorous rules on translators, asking them to be "invisible" during the translation process. As a "match-maker" or even the "slave" of the original author, the translator is acting as a "dictation tool" in a subdominant position. Then in the 1970s, with the occurrence of "cultural turn" in the western translation study, the international translation study switched its attention from linguistic study to cultural perspective. A great many translation theorists begin to notice the role of translator. Once an invisible presence behind the textual "scene", translator is now being granted a leading role in the signifying process and threatens even to upstage the author. The significance of the translator's subjectivity has been realized.The translator's subjectivity penetrates the whole process of translating activity. It is not only manifested in the understanding, interpretation and reproduction of the original work, but also in the selection of translation material and the choice of translation strategy. However, with the recognition of translator's subjectivity, the display of subjectivity is mistakenly taken as the freedom to do whatever the translator likes without the consideration of the original work in someone's opinion, and the conditionality of translator's subjectivity has been ignored. The translator's subjectivity is under some kinds of restrictions, such as the original cultural structure of translator, the bilingual cultural ability of translator, the original author and text as well as the recipients of the translation. Discussing and paying attention to those restrictive factors is not only serving as a fetter or constraint for translators, but also offering the tips for how to display the translator's subjectivity properly.After that, emphasizing on the translation of Zhu Zhenwu (朱振武), through the comparative study of the two Chinese versions of The Da Vinci Code, the author attempts to classify the translation into two parts. For one part, due to the proper display of translator's subjectivity, Zhu Zhenwu's (朱振武) translation has faithfully reproduced the ideas and style of the original and successfully approached to readers. For the other part, nevertheless, due to the restrictions of the translator's background knowledge, cultural elements, language skill, and even the excessive exaggeration of the subjectivity, the ideas and style of Zhu Zhenwu's(朱振武)translation have deviated from that of the original, therefore influencing the quality of translation to some extent.As a conclusion, the thesis intends to declare that translation is more than a scientific transformation of languages. The existence of translator's subjectivity is not only objective but also significant. However, the display of translator's subjectivity should be proper, and there is a bottom line for that—translation should be faithful to the original. In other words, "faithfulness" is the bottom line of translation. The translator's subjectivity is under some kinds of restrictions. By understanding those restrictive factors well, the translator is able to manipulate translation better and promote the quality and acceptability of translation.