The Translation Variation In Self-translated Literary Works Based On Self-translator's Subjectivity

Self-translation, carried out by the author of his or her own works, is a subject which is complicated and neglected in translation studies. Having investigated the development of the study on self-translation at home and abroad, the writer of the thesis finds that in the West lots of studies have been done on the self-translations especially by Samuel Becket and Vladimir Nabokov, and while in China, it has been paid little attention to and located in the frontier position. Nevertheless, with the rapid and far-reaching development of translation studies, all aspects of translation will be gradually explored and discussed. Moreover, there are a lot of prominent bilingual writers who are masters of two languages and their outstanding self-translated literary works, so it will open up a new study scope in translation field. In addition, as mastering a foreign language is getting more and more prevalent, self-translation will be more expected and worth further studying which spotlights the importance of the study on self-translation as well.Compared with common translators, self-translators win the most profound and clearest understanding of the original text, so they will make the closest explanation in the target text. Moreover, due to the special position of writer-cum-translators (the original work created by him), they dare to "change" the original text greatly. Furthermore, the target text with many changes compared with the original one is exactly the result of the self-translator's full display of his/her subjectivity.Therefore, translation variation enters into researchers'view naturally. Translation variation has been ignored in translation studies for a long time mainly because "faithfulness" was regarded as the only orthodox criterion. The past few decades witnessed a development of inter-discipline studies. As a result, people were no longer content with the discussion of literal transformation in translation, but shifted their focus to more dynamic factors such as translator, target readers and culture. Translation variation therefore received more and more attention, especially when Prof. Huang Zhonglian proposed translation variation theory, which provides strong theoretical support for the study of translation variation. However, the current researches are mainly centered on minor variation and are mostly found in the field of applied translation, while marked variation in the literary field is seldom involved. Thus, based on the above analysis, the writer selects three main self-translators in China and their representative CE self-translated works and sets them as examples. Based on the display of self-translator's subjectivity under the instruction of Functional Translation Theory, Reception Aesthetics and Nida's model of translation, this thesis attempts to explore the principle of translation variation in self-translated literary works, analyze the effects to translation variation caused by self-translator's translation purpose, target readers'reception expectation and the special translation model of self-translation.In the end, the writer tries to point out the implications for translation. On one hand, Self-translators can fully display their subjectivity during the process of self-translation led by some factors like translator's translation purpose and target readers'reception expectation, and the like. What's more, those many translation variations in self-translated literary works are exactly the result of self-translator's full display of subjectivity to harmonize with other translation subjects. On the other hand, the popularity of these self-translated works also proves the successful application of translation variation in self-translation of literary works and thus broadens the applicant range of translation variation from applied translation to literature translation, which is rather instructive for the literature translators to complement their missions. The study may help to improve some translation means and strategies in future. At the same time, it can broaden the scope and range of translation studies and thus deepen the knowledge and understanding of translation studies and translator's subjectivity.It's a new try for this thesis to study the subject based on previous researches, so there must be many defects. However, the writer of this thesis only hopes that in the near future more and more people will conduct researches into the fields of self-translation and translation variation in order to broaden the range and scope of translation studies.