Research On The Indeterminacy Of Translation From The Persective Of Subjective Construal

The indeterminacy of translation, first put forward by an American philosopherW.V.Quine in his book Word and Object (1960), breaks the myth of the only correcttranslated version in the world. However, his indeterminacy of translation mainly serves hisown Behaviorism in linguistics instead of studying translation questions in depth. He studiesthe indeterminacy of translation from the specific circumstance called “radical translation”,regardless of the linguistic characteristics of society, culture and history. Therefore, his viewhas attracted tremendous interests in the fields of philosophy and translation. Up to now, a lotof philosophers, linguists and translators at home and broad admit the indeterminacy oftranslation, but they explain it from different perspectives. Some study it from the perspectiveof meaning as use, some from the perspective of philosophy, some from the perspective ofcross-culture and some others from the perspective of deconstruction. These studies havemade some achievements, which not only widen the research field but also give a newunderstanding of the indeterminacy of translation. However, these previous researches are notcomprehensive and systematic. Till now, few researches have put translators’ subjectivity intoconsideration and have discussed the indeterminacy of translation from cognitive linguistics.Subjective construal (mainly developed from Langacker’s construal), a new perspective,is selected as the starting point to study the indeterminacy of translation. The author selectsthe poem of Deng Gao as an example, because poetry translation is different from othertext-types of translation due to its terseness in language, abstruseness in meaning, richness inimage and beauty in form. These characteristics determine the difficulties translators facedwith in the process of translating Chinese poems, but it can also well reflect the subjectivity ofthe translator. In the process of translation, the author makes a comparative analysis of the five English versions of Deng Gao by Du Fu from the six dimensions (scope and background,perspective, prominence, specificity, affection, and modality) of subjective construal by usinga qualitative analysis and illuminates how these six dimensions cause the indeterminacy oftranslation:Firstly, different cognitive scopes and relative encyclopedic knowledge activated bydifferent translators who come from different countries with different thinking models,educational levels and living customs can cause the indeterminacy of translation.Secondly, different vantage points and models of scanning selected by differenttranslators can cause the indeterminacy of translation.Thirdly, different aspects the translators want to profile or hide can cause theindeterminacy of translation.Fourthly, the construal of the same text in fine-grained detail or in coarse-graineddescription can cause the indeterminacy of translation.Fifthly, the selection of different tones, rhetoric devices and rhythms by differenttranslators who want to express their own emotions, moods, intentions, and attitudes towardsthe same text can cause the indeterminacy of translation.Sixthly, the selection of different modal verbs and lexical devices by different translatorscan cause the indeterminacy of translation.