On The Translator’s Subjectivity In Ken Liu’s Translation Of Folding Beijing

In the history of translation studies,translators,though in effect the core participants of any translation activity,were long marginalized,with their subjectivity,their creativity in particular,either utterly neglected or obscured and the credit due to themnot acknowledged.This is why translators were often compared to mouthpieces,dancers in shackles and translation machines to name just a few.Since the emergence of cultural turn in Western translation studies,both the status of the translator and his role in translation have gradually become recognized and appreciated by more and more Western scholars.As such,the translator’s subjectivity has emerged among the most-hotly discussed topics in today’s translation studies,and is often applied to account for the differences between the source and target texts.This thesis first looks at the connotations and manifestations of the translator’s subjectivity to lend credence to the relevant studies on the matter.Then,it moves on to investigate the constraints,both subjective and objective ones,a translator is subject to throughout the translating process as well as Ken Liu’s thoughts on translation with an eye to raising translators’ awareness to stay well within the bounds of propriety in translation practice and shed light on what they can personally do to improve their translation competence.Lastly,this thesis conducts a case study of Ken Liu’s translation of Hugo-award winning science fiction Folding Beijing from the perspective of the translator’s subjectivity to probe into the contributing factors to Ken Liu’s success in introducing Folding Beijing to the anglophone world,thereby confirming the significance of studies on the translator’s subjectivity and providing insights for home translators who aspire to bring more excellent Chinese literature to the world’s acclaim but may not have achieved much success in the cause.