A Contrastive Study Of The Two Chinese Versions Of Moment In Peking

Translator’s subjectivity has attracted the attention of translation researchers inrecent years. The theory of translator’s subjectivity originated in the West togetherwith the “Cultural Turn” in translation studies of the1970s, which attachesimportance to cultural elements in translation and highlights the influence oftranslator’s subjectivity on translation. The translator is considered to be subject oftranslation activity whose function is the same as the original author. Translator’ssubjectivity provides a different perspective for translation criticism and translationstudies.Moment in Peking is an English novel by Lin Yutang, the purpose of which is tointroduce Chinese culture to the Western society. The novel has been nominated as theNobel Prize winner four times. As a masterpiece of high literary and cultural value, itleaves certain room for translators to give a full play of their subjectivity in theprocess of translation. Up to now there exist various translated versions of the noveland among which are the version by Zhang Zhengyu and the version by Yu Fei. Basedon the study of the two Chinese versions of Moment in Peking in the light of thetheory of translator’s subjectivity, the thesis aims to analyze the display of translator’ssubjectivity in translation in source text selection, source text understanding and targettext producing, in the hope of revealing the significance of translator’s subjectivity fortranslation studies. The study neither finds translation errors on the basis of thestandard of fidelity nor judges which version is better but describes translator’ssubjectivity in translation objectively.The thesis falls into three chapters. Chapter one is literature review which coversdefinitions of translator’s subjectivity, a review of researches on translator’ssubjectivity and manifestations of translator’s subjectivity in translation. Chapter twois an introduction of Lin Yutang’s life experience and his major works. Chapter threeis an analysis of translator’s subjectivity reflected in the translated versions by ZhangZhengyu and Yu Fei, in which translators’ translational motives, their understandingsof the source text, their choice of translation strategies and their different translation characteristics are probed into.After a careful research, it can be safely concluded that translator’s subjectivity isone factor that will lead to different translations, that the translator should consciouslydisplay and supervise his subjectivity, that realization of translator’s subjectivitybroadens our vision in translation studies and lifts us on a new ground to appreciateand evaluate translations, and that retranslation of classical works should beencouraged.