A Contrastive Study On Two Chinese Translation Versions Of Moment In Peking From The Perspective Of Translator’s Subjectivity

With the development of cultural turn and sociological turn in translation studies in the 1990 s,more and more scholars at home and abroad have paid attention to the research on translator’s subjectivity.Translator is the doer of translation activities,and the translator’s subjectivity consists of both initiative and passivity.In the process of translation activities,on the one hand,translator can exert initiative,on the other hand,he or she is restricted by many factors beyond language.This Thesis is a contrastive study between two Chinese translation versions of Moment in Peking(Jinghuayanyun and Shunxijinghua)from the perspective of translator’s subjectivity.Specially speaking,two questions will be answered in this thesis: What are the differences between two Chinese translation versions in style and narrative(in micro and macro respects)? What are the reasons for stylistic and narrative differences?In order to answer this question,methods of textual closing reading,contrastive study,and case study are used to research differences between two translation versions of Moment in Peking and analyze the reasons for the above differences from the perspective of translator’s subjectivity.Conclusions can be stated in two respects.(1)First is on stylistic and narrative differences.For style,Zhang Zhenyu’s version(more use of four-character idioms,short sentences,flexibility in paragraphing,forms of Zhanghuiti/each chapter with a caption,and text with elegant style)is different from Yu Fei’s version(more use of common words,long sentences,paragraph in line with the original text,western chapters,and text with plain style).As to narrative,Zhang Zhenyu’s version and Yu Fei’s version are different when back-translating historical narratives and narrative perspectives.(2)Second is on subjectivity reasons for resulting in stylistic and narrative differences.The initiative reasons for resulting in differences of language features are as follows: different translation purposes,different understandings on the original text,different translation strategies,and different expressions in the translation texts.And the passivity reasons are that translatorsare manipulated by the social historical context and poetics norms,and influenced by language forms of the times.Because translator is the doer of translation activities,he/she not only can give full play to the effects of initiativity,but also is restricted by many objective factors.The combination of stylistic and narrative analysis is helpful to analyze the differences between two Chinese translation versions in a comprehensive and systematic way.From the perspective of translator’s subjectivity,initiative and passivity reasons for the above differences can be found.