A Study On The Translator’s Subjectivity In The English Version Of Gu Wen Guan Zhi (Selected)

Translation is the activity of people, in which the translator is the most active factor. But for long, translation theory has mostly focused on the linguistic level, and the mention of people’s function mainly lies in the loyalty to the original or reader’s acceptance, resulting in long-term ignorance of translator’s status. With the development of translation theory research, especially the the cultural perspective brought by "cultural turn", the study on the translator has been provided with solid theoretical foundation, and the status and role of the translator in the translation activity has been fully affirmed, what’s more, the concept of translator’s subjectivity also has got intensive study.Gu Wen Guan Zhi is a famous anthology assembled by Wu Chucai and Wu Diaohou in the year of the reign of Emperor Kangxi during Qing Dynasty. But till now there hasn’t been a complete English version of Gu Wen Guan Zhi, and the relative early translation work was done by Herbert Allen Giles from British in 1884. At home, the studies on the English version of Gu Wen Guan Zhi mainly rest on a single essay or a few amounts in it, so the study from an overall perspective has been rarely seen, let alone from the point of the translator’s subjectivity. Gu Wen Guan Zhi (selected) was translated and edited by Professor Luo Jingguo. The thirty-two essays chosen to be translated in it have highly acclaimed and widely read in China with great cultural impact. In this way, it possesses great significance to study the English version of Gu Wen Guan Zhi from an overall perspective of the translator’s subjectivity.In the beginning of the main body, this thesis discusses the concept of the translator’s subjectivity and related issues, in which the translator’s status changing from being ignored to being recognized are involved, the translator’s subjective initiative and objective constraints are analyzed and the translator’s bilingual ability and cultural background and his conscientiousness are also discussed. In chapter two and three, it analyzes the display of the translator’s subjectivity in translating Gu Wen Guan Zhi (selected) from two perspectives of linguistic level and cultural level. At the linguistic level, this thesis first concludes the general features of the original and then shows the translator’s initiative from three aspects of translating non-cultural words, sentences and figures of speech. The translator’s translating non-cultural words is characterized by his flexibility in handling the titles and accuracy in words translation; his translation of sentences adopts three main methods, that is, accordance with the original sentences, separation and combination and conversion of sentence components; as to the translator’s transferring the figures of speech, this thesis concludes that he either reserves the original ones or transforms the original images. All these analyses are combined with detailed examples taken from the book to demonstrate the translator’s function in translating. At the cultural level, this thesis first states the cultural differences existing in translation and their general translation strategies, that is, foreignization and domestication. Regarding the object of this thesis, it concludes that the translator Luo Jingguo adopts foreignization as the major strategy and domestication as the secondary strategy. The employed foreignization can be further divided into complete foreignization and foreignization with semantic supplement and notes; and domestication used consists of abridged domestication and analogized domestication. In this part, related examples are also illustrated to present the important role of the translator.In terms of methodology, the author of this thesis employs descriptive research method to objectively represent the important role of the translator in the translating process. The research method of text comparison and analysis is also adopted when the concrete embodiment of the translator’s subjectivity in translation gets deeply analyzed.In conclusion, through the detailed Chinese-English contrastive analyses of Gu Wen Guan Zhi (selected), this thesis discusses the representation of the translator’s subjectivity in translating and related translation strategies adopted to cope with classical Chinese essays abundant in cultural connotation. It is hoped that this thesis could bring enough attention to Chinese classics translation, and at the same time contribute to people’s understanding of the translator’s subjectivity.