A Study On Translator’s Subjectivity From The Perspective Of Hermeneutics: With Special Reference To Lin Yu-tang’s Verstion Of Fu Sheng Liu Ji

Translator is one of the most active factors in the activity of translating. However, traditionaltranslation theories used to put the original author and the source text in the center, throwing the translatorinto a marginalized and inferior position. With the arising of “cultural turn” in translation studies, moreattention has been paid to various socio-cultural factors, and translators’ status has been highlighted to agreat extent. At the same time, scholars’ researches from different philosophical perspectives, especiallyfrom hermeneutics, have made the translators’ subjectivity a central topic in translation studies. Discussionsabout prejudice, fusion of horizon and historicity of understanding in modern philosophical hermeneuticsoffered many implications for translation study scholars. George Steiner’s “fourfold hermeneutic motiontheory”, namely,“trust”,“aggression”,“incorporation” and “compensation”, is greatly influenced by thosediscussed in modern philosophical hermeneutics when he made a close and thorough description ofmeaning and understanding underlying the translation process in his famous book After Babel: Aspects ofLanguage and Translation.Taking Lin Yutang’s English translation of Fu Sheng Liu Ji as a case, adopting George Steiner’sfourfold hermeneutic motion theory as a framework, this thesis presents a detailed analysis of thetranslator’s subjectivity in the process of translation through many examples. Besides, the author alsodiscusses the influence of factors on the play of the translator’s subjectivity.This thesis is made up of five chapters. The first chapter is the introduction which briefly shows theresearch background, objectives, significance, questions and methodology of the whole thesis. Chapter2mainly talks about the previous researches on the development of the study on translator’s subjectivity bothat home and abroad. It also gives a historical review of the translator’s subjectivity from the perspective ofhermeneutics. Chapter3is dedicated to the theoretical framework, which introduces the key notions ofhermeneutics and George Steiner’s fourfold hermeneutic translation theory motion. In Chapter4, a specificanalysis of Lin Yutang’s English version of Fu Sheng Liu Ji is carried out to see how the translator’ssubjectivity is reflected in every step of Steiner’s hermeneutic motion. Moreover, the author tries tosummarize that translators’ subjectivity will be mainly influenced by linguistic competence, translation motivation, personal prejudice, fusion of horizon and historicity of understanding during the translatingprocess. The last chapter of the thesis is the conclusion which generally summarizes the above chapters andthe major achievement. Moreover, the limitations of the thesis and the suggestions for further study on thisresearch field are also stated in this chapter.