On Translator’s Subjectivity In The Different English Versions Of Fu Sheng Liu Ji:from The Perspective Of Hermeneutics

Translation activity has always been regarded as a part of people’s life and it is not only a tool for transmitting the information, but also a bridge among different cultural exchanges. As the bridge of translation activities, the translator plays a prominent role throughout the process of translation activity in which whether the understanding of the source text or the output of the target text. No translator can avoid the translator’s initiative. In other words, the translator’s subjectivity is an objective reality. However, the translator’s subjectivity has not attracted sufficient attention in the translation field. Translators are always in subordinate positions from the concept of "invisible person" which is the best interpretation of the translators’status. Fortunately, with the "cultural turn" of the translation study, the role of the translator’s subjectivity has gradually drawn the widespread attention, especially in the field of literary translation, for the translators not only have to experience the aesthetic of the literary work, but also have to convey the main idea of it, which requires that the translators not only confine the translation in the literal transfer but also decode the source text profoundly.It is known that the premise of the translation is the accurate understanding of the source text which relies on the most important way:interpretation. Hermeneutics theory is to understand and interpret the source text. Therefore, it is of great significance to research on the translation. With the diversified characteristics of the society, widespread attention has been paid to the hermeneutics, which gradually developed from the initial art field to other fields. George Steiner, the outstanding representative of translation studies, applied the hermeneutics into the translation field on the basis of philosophical hermeneutics. He divided the whole process of translation activities into four steps:trust, aggression, incorporation and compensation, each of which is permeated with the translators’ understanding. Different translators living in different periods may have various perceptions and understandings to the same source text. There are also other diverse aspects of translators which can influence the translator’s subjectivity, such as the translators’ cultural consciousness, values, and intentions and so on. Due to these differences, the same source text is always accompanied with many various translated versions. The paper will select Shen Fu’s autobiographical novel Fu Sheng Liu Ji as the research object, and a comparative analysis of the three different English versions will be made on the basis of George Steiner’s hermeneutic translation theory. The paper aims at the manifestation of the translator’s subjectivity in the four translation steps by making the comparative analysis on the basis of George Steiner’s hermeneutic motion theory of the three different English versions of Fu Sheng Liu Ji, an autobiographical novel of Shen Fu who was from Qing Dynasty.