On Translator’s Subjectivity In The Chinese Version Of The Great Gatsby From The Perspective Of George Steiner’s Hermeneutic Motion

The translator as the most active role in translation was put in an obscure place for a long time in the history of translation study. Thanks to the cultural turn in the1970s, the focus of translation study shifted from the text to the study of culture. The translator’s subjectivity has gradually received attention both abroad and at home so it becomes a hot topic in the academic field of translation.Hermeneutics is a theory about text interpreting and understanding. The core concepts such as pre-understanding, prejudice, fusion of horizons, and effective history in hermeneutics bring new light into translation theory study. Hermeneutics and translation have a natural connection. George Steiner’s fourfold hermeneutic translation motion, which includes trust, aggression, incorporation and compensation, concretely describes the translating process in literary translation.Based on Steiner’s hermeneutic motion as theoretical framework, a study on the translator’s subjectivity through the concrete analysis of Wu Ningkun’s version of The Great Gatsby is conducted in this thesis. Abundant examples from the novel are collected to illustrate the exertion of translator’s subjectivity in each step of four-fold translation motion. Meanwhile, the writer of this thesis explores the influence of language, cultural and historical factors on the understanding and reproduction of the original text through the analysis of Wu Ningkun’s version of The Great Gatsby. The following is an outline of the thesis.At the beginning of this thesis is a brief introduction in which the background of the study, the purpose of the study, the significance of the study, the research questions and the layout of the thesis are listed.Chapter one is the literature review on the translator’s subjectivity and the previous studies on the translation of The Great Gatsby.Chapter two serves as the working theoretical framework of the thesis. The principal hermeneutic concepts and George Steiner’s fourfold hermeneutic motion theory are introduced and discussed. Chapter three is the key part of the research. Firstly, The Great Gatsby and its translation versions are introduced. Then the detailed case study on Wu Ningkun’s translation version of The Great Gatsby is made from George Steiner’s hermeneutic motion, namely, trust, aggression, incorporation and compensation. The influence of language, cultural and historical factors on the understanding and reproduction of Wu Ningkun’s version of The Great Gatsby is explored.The last part is the conclusion of major findings. The translator Wu Ningkun exerts his own subjectivity in each step of hermeneutic motions. His life experience, personal preference, linguistic competence and culture background all have a great influence on his choice of the original work, his understanding of the text, his incorporation of meaning and form and his compensation to the loss in translation.