An Analysis Of The Translator’s Subjectivity From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

Since1970’s, there appears “Cultural Turn” in western countries, which broadens thehorizon of translation studies and raises translators’ cultural and principal status. Moreattention is paid to the Translator’s Subjectivity. The Translators Subjectivity not onlyreflects in meeting the requirements of the translation consignors, analyzing translationpurposes, selecting translation strategies, but also reflected in many aspects such asunderstanding and interpretation of the source texts. Skopos Theory was initiallyproposed by Hans Vermeer, the functionalism translation theorist in German. Throughoutthe whole progress, translators are dynamic and active. Under this circumstance, SkoposTheory provides better theoretical support for doing the research on the TranslatorsSubjectivity.After analyzing the connotation of the Translator’s Subjectivity and Skopos theory, itis found that in actual translations, Skopos theory and the Translator’s Subjectivity areclosed related together and jointly act on translation. In order to explore how Skopostheory and the Translator’s Subjectivity can work on the whole translation together, thisresearch adopts two English translation versions of Sanguoyanyi, and conducts thecontrastive analysis from the macro and micro levels.This thesis can be divided into five parts. The first part is an introduction to thisresearch. It includes the research background, the research methodology, the significanceand the organization of this research. Chapter two is the literature review part. It is areview of the studies of the Translator’s Subjectivity. Chapter three and Chapter four arethe major parts of the research. They will explore the Translator’s Subjectivity from themacro and micro level by discussing the difference of the two translators’ purposes andsubjectivity as well as the examples from the text of Sanguoyanyi.At last, this study pointed out that it is feasible to do the research on the Translator’sSubjectivity in the perspective of Skopos theory; when talking about the Translator’sSubjectivity, it is not appropriate to detract it or overstate it too much; it is notappropriate to judge a translation only according to the literal information. Any act of translation takes place in the socio-cultural context. It is important to judge thetranslation with adequate consideration of the background of the translator, target readers,translation purposes and initiators.