Literary Translation, The Translator Of Aesthetic Subjectivity

Translation, as a comprehensive and multidisciplinary study, is closely linked with aesthetics. The combination of translation and aesthetics is one of the significant characteristics of the translation theories in China. Some scholars think that aesthetics is the theoretical basis of the traditional translation theories in China. and the translator plays a decisive role in the practice. In the traditional translation theory, however, the translators are put in an insignificant position and often regarded as"servants"or"craftsmen". With the"cultural turn"in the translation research, the status of the translators has been gradually elevated.At present, however, the focus of the study on translators is mainly on theirs abilities, accomplishment, and qualities, rather than their subjectivity in aesthetic appreciation. This thesis, based on the aesthetic theory of translation, makes a comparative analysis of the three well-known Chinese versions of Tess of the D'urbervilles. It first analyzes the purpose, the initiative and the receptiveness of translators as an aesthetic subject so as to reveal how they, with their aesthetic psychological mechanism, understand and reproduce the aesthetic characteristics of the original through the display of construction, translation strategies, translation style, etc. This thesis attempts to reveal translators'key role and important social value in the determination of translation quality.This thesis consists of the following four chapters: chapter one introduces the relationship between aesthetics and literary translation, and reviews the sources of aesthetics; chapter two discusses the psychological mechanism of aesthetic appreciation in literary translation and shows that the function of the psychological structure in aesthetic appreciation greatly improves the translator's initiative and effectively expresses the objective; chapter three discusses the translator's subjectivity in aesthetic appreciation in translation and points out the three characters of the translator: purpose, receptiveness, and initiative; chapter four mainly analyzes the embodiment of the translators'subjectivity in their translation of Tess: the translators'purpose, that is, the understanding and reproduction of the artistic beauty of the original; their receptiveness, that is, decoding the original information and reproducing it; their initiative, that is, their activeness and creativity; their potential quality to appreciate the beauty of the original.By analyzing their subjectivity as the subject of aesthetic appreciation, the translator's important role played in translation is expounded. This thesis concludes that translators'styles and strategies can be embodied in the translations of the same original because of the involvement of the translators as a subject of aesthetic appreciation; translators'understanding and reproduction of the original are different because of their different construction and appreciation in the course of translation; our new age requires translators to improve their aesthetic appreciation so as to make literary translations better.