Study Translator’s Subjectivity From The Perspective Of Philosophical Hermeneutics

Officially published on 19 October, 1943, Talks at the Yan’an Conference on Literature and Art is comprised of Mao Zedong’s introduction and conclusion of the meeting, which were made on 2 May and 23 May 1942 respectively. As a document of great importance, this text is collected into volume III of Selected Works. With its increasing impact in China, the text has been translated into different languages and published in many countries. Those translated texts also arouse the interests of many foreign commentators. However, most of commentary articles are restricted to its content and political effect while few pay attention to its translation elements.The subjectivity of translator has gradually been highlighted after a long time of being intentionally concealed in the history of translation. For quite a long time, translators are required to be so ‘invisible’ and ‘transparent’ in their works that their existence could not be recognized. In the 1990 s, with the “cultural turn” in translation studies, the scope of translation studies are gradually expanded and the study on translation subjectivity has been recognized and accepted. As one of the important translation theories, Hermeneutics not only provides translation studies a new perspective, but also enables people to have a better understanding of translator’s subjectivity. The theory of Hermeneutics is closely related to translation since both of them are based on the understanding and interpretation of meaning. With the “cultural turn” in translation studies, it is widely held by advocates of Hermeneutics that translation is inevitably affected by the subjectivity of its translator, including one’s world outlooks, values and personal experiences. In other words, translators do play subjective roles in the translation process. The subjectivity of a translator refers to the subjective initiative one uses when translating with his own intention on the premise of respecting the translated object.This thesis adopts the method of case study by contrasting and analyzing two English versions of Talks at the Yan’an Conference on Literature and Art. One is translated by the sinologist Bonnie S. Mc Dougall(1941-) and the other is the one published by the Foreign Language Press under the instruction of the Chinese government. Based on the principles of Hermeneutics, the thesis is to make a thorough analysis of how the translators deal with linguistic as well as cultural elements in the two translated texts. Subsequently, the thesis draws the conclusions that the translated text is not only the reproduction of the original text, but also reflects the historicity of understanding of the translator, who lives in a specific time; that the historicity of understanding and the prejudice of the translator determine the historicity of the translated texts; that historicity of translation activities and the translated texts require literary criticism and appreciation to establish a historical view.