Influence Of Translator’ S Translation Poetics On His Subjectivity

The translator plays an indispensable role in translation activities. However, thetraditional translation studies with the domination of prescription focus on theuniversally applicable translation regulations. However, the role of translator has beenput into a shadowy position for a long time. Thanks to the Cultural Turn in the1970sand1980s, the translation studies have transferred from the micro linguistic level to themacro cultural context, thus providing theoretical support for the studies on translators.As a result, the translator’s subjective place in the translation process has been greatlyrecognized and even highlighted. In recent years, studies on subjectivity of translatorhave drawn more and more attention. Some questions relevant to subjectivity alsobecome popular in the field of translation studies. For example, the translator cannotfunction the subjective role without restricts. There are many factors that restrict theperformance of the translator’s subjectivity, such as ideology, social and culturalbackground, knowledge and patronage, etc. In other words, the translator’s subjectivitydoes not function without limit. Yet there are few researches talked about the influentialfactor of translator’s translation poetics working on his or her subjectivity duringtranslation. The present paper tries to make a case study of Lu Xun discussing theinfluence of his poetics of translation exerting on his translation activity.The present paper attempts to answer the following questions: firstly, differenttranslators hold different translation poetics. In other words, each translator can havetheir own distinct translation poetics so what are the factors forming Lu Xun’stranslation poetics? Secondly, how does translator perform his or her subjectivity?Lastly, under his or her translation poetics, how does translator function subjectivityduring the process of translation?In order to complete this research, this thesis firstly adopts method of documentalanalysis to collect materials of translation poetics, subjectivity of translator and LuXun’s translation practice, and abstract main points of these materials. Then based on previous studies, this thesis uses descriptive approach to analyze and figure out thattranslator cannot function their subjectivity freely during the process of translation,because of one of influential factors—translation poetics. This thesis also tries toexplore Lu Xun’s translation poetics and its forming factors. And then, the present thesistakes Lu Xun’s translation activity as a case study to explain the embodiment of hissubjectivity from the perspective of translation poetics. To put it in a clear way, thisthesis explores from the following three aspects:The answer to the first question-why to translate for Lu Xun, is what motivateshim to translate, which has a close tie to his translation poetics that translation can bringthe new hopes to his dearest motherland and his people and offer chances to reform hiscountry so that it could get out of cruel reality.What does Lu Xun choose to translate? The answer goes for Lu Xun’s selection ofsource texts. He chose the literary works mainly from Russia, Austria, Finland, Spain,Holland, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Japan since thosenations had a similar social situation and historical development. And Lu Xun wanted tolearn and absorb their advanced and valuable thoughts to educate the new generation ofthe Chinese, which is closely related with his motives to translate as well as with histranslation poetics in a deeper level.How does Lu Xun translate? The reply to the final question comes to Lu Xun’stranslation ideas, which can be illustrated as the principles of “yijie” and “fengzi”,translating strategy--foreignization or literary translation, and his translation criteria.The principles of “yijie” and “fengzi”, translating strategy--foreignization and criteriaof faithfulness and smoothness are all aimed to maintain the foreign flavor of theoriginal texts, by which Lu Xun intended to convey the utmost reality of what theoriginal author described about the sufferings of the oppressed so as to waken theawareness of his people.In conclusion, by taking Lu Xun’s translation activity as a case study to explore theundeniable fact that translation poetics plays an important role on translator’ssubjectivity, this thesis lays emphasize on that the standard of judging one translationworks should take translator’s subjectivity into consideration.