The Manifestation Of Translators’ Subjectivity In Desert Hunters From The Perspective Of George Steiner’s Hermeneutic Motion Theory

In translation studies,the equivalence on the linguistic level has been emphasized for a long time.And the original content and style are supposed to be faithfully represented in the target text.However,the translator’s role as the subject of translation is ignored.With the establishment of translation studies as an independent discipline,the focus has been shifted to elements beyond the text,such as culture,history and society.As the translator’s status is elevated,influence of the translator’s subjective initiative on the translated text is growing.Hermeneutics is a theory and philosophy about the understanding and interpretation of the meaning.George Steiner combines it with translation and divides the process of translation into four movements:trust,aggression,incorporation and compensation.Each step is closely related to the display of translators’ subjectivity.As one of the most famous novels of Xue Mo,Desert Hunters,together with Desert Rites and Baihu Guan,makes up "Desert Trilogy".Since its publication in 2003,the book has ascended to the bestseller list and the book list recommended by experts for many times.The English version of Desert Hunters translated by Howard Goldblatt and his wife Sylvia Lichun Lin was first launched in Shanghai in 2018.Since it is a representative work of contemporary Chinese western literature,the translation of this book makes it possible for western readers to know more about Chinese traditional culture.Taking George Steiner’s hermeneutic motion as its theoretical framework,the thesis intends to study the translation of Desert Hunters.In order to explore the translator’s subjectivity displayed in the four steps,a number of examples selected from the original text will be analyzed in details.By integrating theory with textual analysis,the author analyzes how translators exploit their subjective initiative in the four motions.The thesis proves the feasibility of hermeneutic motion theory to study the translators’subjectivity.Moreover,the display of translators’subjectivity promotes the success of the English version of Desert Hunters.