Chapter I Introduction
Translator’s subjectivity is a new term turning up at the end of 20 th century.Though the translator is definitely the main subject of translation activity,it has been ignored for a long time in the studies of translation theories and practice.In the eyes of most people,translating is nothing but a simple or mechanical activity of linguistic transformation while the translator is just the“servant”or“mechanic”of the linguistic transformation.And most approaches tend to establish prescriptive principles and rules of equivalence between source text and target text to govern translation behavior.In order to avoid being a betrayer of the original,the translator even has to oppress his/her initiative and struggles to obtain the so-called faithfulness.
With the“cultural turn”occurring in translation studies,translator’s subjectivity has become one of the hot issues.Influenced by this,new understanding of the translation norms appears.Gideon Toury has been“highly influential in developing the concept of norms as an analytical tool in studying translations” (Schaffner,2007:1).According to Toury(Gentzler,2004:127-131),translation is a norm-governed behavior and the norms are descriptive instead of prescriptive,and target-oriented rather than source-oriented.In order that the target text can be integrated in the target culture,the translator should make various decisions based on the norms,and just the selections made by translators in turn show their special identity and subjectivity.
Hong Lou Meng,a famous Chinese literature classic,is also a great Chinese costume culture classic. And the study of costume culture translation of Hong Lou Meng will be beneficial to the dissemination of the traditional Chinese culture.Among the ten English versions of Hong Lou Meng,only two are completed,one by Yang Xianyi&Gladys Yang and the other by David Hawkes&John Minford.These two versions are successful in reproducing the original novel and they are filled with characteristic treatment to costume culture translation which is a good material to represent the translator’s subjectivities and which can be used for the comparison of translator’s subjectivity.