A Comparative Study Of Translators' Subjectivity In The Chinese Versions Of A Passage To India From The Perspective Of George Steiner's Hermeneutic Motion Theory

E.M. Forster is one of the distinguished modernism writers in Britain. His magnum opus, A Passage to India, has garnered continuous acclaim and popularity since its introduction into China in the 1990s with several translations published in the market. Of all the studies focused on this piece of work, few looked at the work from translation point of view, which is a shame. The rich cultural contents of the novel pose a considerable challenge to the language skills, knowledge base and in particular subjectivity of the translator. Therefore, a look into translator's subjectivity makes a feasible area of study.Hermeneutics translation theories originate from George Steiner's After Babel, in which the 4-step translation strategy, composed of trust, aggression, incorporation and compensation is introduced. Trust refers to recognition of the source text; aggression refers to the influence the subjectivity of translator exerts on the source text; incorporation is the direct result of aggression and compensation constitutes the attempt to restore true color of the source text to the translated text. This paper takes guidance from hermeneutics theories and compares two translations of A Passage to India, respectively from Yang Zijian and Shi Youshan in an attempt to elaborate how translator's subjectivity is shown in the two works and how subjectivity affects his translation strategies and translation quality.