哲学阐释学角度下苏轼词英译中的译者主体性研究.doc

硕硕 士士 学学 位位 论论 文文 The Translator s Subjectivity in the Translation of Su Shi s Ci Poetry from the Perspective of Philosophical Hermeneutics 哲学阐释学角度下苏轼词英译中的 译者主体性研究 i 哲学阐释学角度下苏轼词英译中的哲学阐释学角度下苏轼词英译中的 译者主体性研究译者主体性研究 摘要摘要 作为中国文学历史上的一颗明珠 宋词翻译引起越来越多国 内外学者的兴趣 苏轼作为北宋文坛一代文宗开创了宋词的豪迈 词风 丰富了词的意境 扩大了词的题材 留下了无数吟诵千古 的名词 对词的革新和发展做出了重大贡献 由于翻译中译者主 体性的彰显 同一文学文本存在多种不同的译本存在 作为哲学 阐释学的代表人物伽达默尔提出了三个核心概念 偏见 理解 的历史性 以及 视域融合 作为一门关于理解和解释的理论 哲 学阐释学理论对翻译研究具有极大的启示 许多中外译者翻译引 介了苏轼词 但对于苏轼词翻译的学术研究可谓凤毛麟角 本文 将以英译的苏轼词为研究对象 以伽达默尔所提出的 偏见 理 解的历史性 以及 视域融合 哲学阐释学理论为视角 研究苏轼词 英译中的一些能体现译者主体性的误读及文化过滤现象 本文作 为哲学阐释学在翻译研究中的一个应用探析 旨在对苏轼词英译 研究提供一个新的视角 关键词 关键词 苏轼 词 哲学阐释学 译者主体性 The Translator s Subjectivity in the Translation of Su Shi s Ci Poetry from the Perspective of Philosophical Hermeneutics Abstract MA Candidate Yang Min Advisor Yang Yingyu As a bright pearl in the history of Chinese literature the translation of ci poetry has attracted more and more scholars interest at home and abroad As a great master of literature of the Northern Song Dynasty Su Shi initiated the bold and unconstrained style of ci poetry enriched the poetic imagery of the ci poetry and expanded the theme of ci poetry Su Shi left numerous famous ci poems through ages and made a significant contribution to the innovation and development of ci poetry Owing to the influence of the translator s subjectivity the same literary work has varied translation versions As a representative of philosophical hermeneutics Gadamer put forward three key concepts historicity of understanding prejudice and fusion of horizons which gives great hints in the translation studies and establishes a theoretical basis of this thesis for the exploration of the translator s subjectivity Compared with the copious translation of i Su Shi s ci poetry the studies of the translations are few and far between With the analysis of some phenomena in translation such as misreading and cultural filtering this thesis will take the English translated versions of Su Shi s ci poetry as the research object to explore the translator s subjectivity in it from the perspective of philosophical hermeneutics This thesis works as an application of philosophical hermeneutics in translation study and aims to offer a new perspective of the study of the translation of Su Shi s ci poetry Key Words Su Shi ci poetry philosophical hermeneutics translator s subjectivity ii Contents Introduction 1 Chapter One An Introduction to Hermeneutics 7 1 1 The Development of Hermeneutics 7 1 2 Basic Concepts in Philosophical Hermeneutics 11 1 2 1 Fore Understanding and Prejudice 11 1 2 2 Historicity of Understanding 13 1 2 3 Fusion of Horizon 14 Chapter Two The Theoretical Foundation of Translator s Subjectivity from the Perspective of Philosophical Hermeneutics 16 2 1 Translation Defined from the Perspective of Hermeneutics 16 2 2 The Connotation of Translator s Subjectivity in Literary Translation 18 2 3 A Hermeneutic Exposition of the Translator s Subjectivity in Literary Translation 20 Chapter Three A Case Study Application of Hermeneutic Approaches to the Translation of Su Shi s Ci Poetry 26 3 1 A General Introduction to Su Shi s Ci Poetry and Its Translation at Home and Abroad 26 3 2 Translator s Subjectivity in Different Versions from the Perspective of Hermeneutics 31 3 2 1 The Translator s Subjectivity from the Perspective of Prejudice 32 3 2 2 The Translator s Subjectivity from the Perspective of the iii Historicity of Understanding 40 3 2 3 The Translator s Subjectivity from the Perspective of Fusion of Horizon 46 Conclusion 53 Bibliography 56 Appendixes 61 Acknowledgements 68 0 Introduction Both Tang poetry and the ci poetry of Song Dynasty have always been regarded as two bright pearls in the history of Chinese literature Ci poetry of the Song Dynasty is also termed as Song Words Long and Short Lines Chinese Lyrics or Tz u It was originally written to music and to be sung The music has its tune names and the words set to a particular tune follow a tonal pattern and rhyme scheme of their own Ci poetry can be divided into xiaoling 小令 middle tune 中调 and long tune 长调 according to the length of it According to the style of ci poetry it can be divided into two schools the Bold and Unconstrained School haofang School 豪放派 with representatives like Su Shi and Xin Qiji and the Graceful and Restrained Scholl wanyue School 婉约派 with representatives like Li Qingzhao Wen Tingyun and Liu Yong In late Tang and Five Dynasties the new genre ci poetry was considered relatively less respectable than poetry because the themes of ci poetry at that time were mainly romantic subjects such as love departure or reunion It was Su Shi who liberated the form of ci poetry from its assumedly inherent limitations as well as from its secondary dependence on music It was also Su Shi who initiated the bold and unconstrained style of ci poetry aiming at reflecting the history and reality in a generous and heroic way Su Shi enlarged the theme of ci poetry and sublimated it into a powerful genre capable of expression 1 all kinds of sentiments and describing various walks of life Su Shi s ci poetry ushered the golden age of ci poetry and had far reaching impact on Chinese literature Su Shi 1037 1101 was one of famous literati of Northern Song Dynasty in China Having left more than 2700 poems more than 300 ci poems and a lot of prose works Su Shi has been called one of the most versatile men who ever trod the earth by James J Y Liu 刘若愚 of Stanford University James Liu 1986 121 As a versatile and talented man Su Shi was a first class poet essayist calligrapher painter philosopher and statesman Su Shi his father Su Xun and his younger brother Su Zhe all are members of Eight Great Masters of the Tang and Song Dynasties 唐宋八大家 Suffered from successively political strife Su Shi experienced numerous setbacks in his whole political career In 1079 Su Shi was arrested on charges of slandering the emperor Song Shenzong 宋神宗 and the New Law Reform 新法改革 in his poems This is the famous Wutai Poem Case 乌台诗案 in Chinese history Then Su Shi was exiled to Huangzhou In Huangzhou Su Shi began to use ci poetry to express whatever he wanted to express in poems to avoid being accused From February in 1080 to April in 1084 Su Shi spent four years and two months in Huangzhou During this period Su Shi composed 108 ci poems So this thesis will focus on the study of Su Shi s ci poems in Huangzhou which are considered as one peak of Su Shi s ci poems creation This thesis will choose Su Shi s ci poems in Huangzhou as a case study to explore the translator s subjectivity from the perspective 2 of the hermeneutics Su Shi s works which reflect his fascinating personality passion for life and philosophical inspiration have attracted many scholars at home and abroad In China In 1986 Xu Zhongjie translated 7 of Su Shi s ci poems in his anthology 100 Chinese Ci Poems in English Verse In 1989 Wang Shouyi translated 2 famous ci poems in his book Selected Poems from Tang and Song Dynasties Xu Yuanchong published A New Translation of Su Shi s Poems in 1982 and another collection Selected Poems of Su Shi in 2007 in which 55 ci poems of Su Shi were translated In 2008 Ren Zhiji s The Poetry of the Eastern Slope A Slected Translation of Poems Ci Selections from the Works of Su Tung po A D 1036 1101 which has a witty foreword named Su Tung po s Literary Background and His Prose Poetry by the Chinese famous scholar Qian Zhongshu All these scholars and many others at home and abroad have made a great contribution on translating Su Shi s ci poems promoting the value of Chinese classics in western world All above just serve as a proof that Su Shi s great achievements in ci poetry After careful researches a conclusion can be drawn out that although there are many translation versions of Su Shi s ci poetry at home and abroad few researches touch the study of the translation of Su Shi s ci poetry Here list some available data concerning the study of the translation of Su Shi s ci poetry Culture Communication on the Translation of Sushi s Jiang Chengzi by Xia Ying in 2007 Beautiful as 4 the Original in Sense Sound and Form A Comparative Study of the Englsh Versions of Su Shi s ci poetry by Wu Qiao in 2007 Conveyance of Aesthetic Effect in the Translation of Su Shi s Ci Poetry by Xu Na in 2008 Transference of Style in English Translation of Su Shi s Ci poetry by Wang Danfeng in 2010 and A Study into the Translations of Su Shi s Ci poems from the Perspective of Manipulation Theory by Hu Jing in 2010 The study of the translation of Su Shi s ci poetry from the hermeneutics perspective in this thesis will offer a new perspective of the study of the translation of Su Shi s ci poetry aiming at making English readers have a better understanding of Su Shi s ci poetry and it also will serve as an application of hermeneutics theories to translation studies Hermeneutics is a methodology of understanding and interpretation developed by German romantics Hermeneutics developed through four stages and in 1960 with the publication of Truth and Method by Hans Georg Gadamer philosophical hermeneutics turned up In the west many scholars took the principles of hermeneutics as theoretical support to translation study Early in the 16th century British theologist L Humphrey put forward a presupposition that translation is interpretation and P D Hut expounded it further in the 17th century Hong Handing 2001 39 42 In the book Truth and Method Gadamer draw a conclusion that every translation is at the same time an interpretation Gadamer 2004 386 Just as Andre Lefevere comments The scholar mostly associated with the rebirth of hermeneutic studies of translation is of course George Steiner Andre 5 Lefevere 1992 14 In the book After Babel Aspects of Language and Translation based on the hermeneutic theories George Steiner puts forward the fourfold hermeneutic translation motion theory which aims at describing the translator s integrated translation process In China there are also more and more scholars to apply hermeneutic theories to the translation studies such as Yang Wuneng Tu Guoyuan Zhu Xianlong and so on Inspired by these scholars research and also based on the truth that the translator s subjectivity plays an important role in translation this thesis will take the principles of hermeneutics as theoretical support to explore the translator s subjectivity in Su Shi s ci poetry There are three chapters in this thesis Chapter one is a theoretical foundation of the whole thesis including the introduction of hermeneutics development and basic concepts put forward in the philosophical hermeneutics stage Chapter two explores the theoretical support in philosophical hermeneutics for the translation studies and has a simple review of the earlier research of the translator s subjectivity in literary translation Chapter three is a very important part introducing Su Shi and his ci poetry and uses many concrete examples in different translation versions to explore the translator s subjectivity from the perspective of hermeneutics 6 Chapter One An Introduction to Hermeneutics 1 1 The Development of Hermeneutics Hermeneutics is a methodology of understanding and interpretation developed by German romantics The roots for the word hermeneutics lie in the Greek verb hermeneuein and its noun hermeneia These two words were closely connected with the wing footed messenger god Hermes Hermes was an Olympian god in Greek religion and mythology and played a role of transmuting the prophecy of the God into a form that can be understood by human beings Thus the origins of the word hermeneutics suggest the process of bringing to understand including three basic directions to say to explain and to translate and these three meanings can be expressed by an English verb to interpret Richard E Palmer 1969 13 There are four main German philosophers greatly contributing to hermeneutics development They respectively represented a trend of hermeneutic thought Friedrich Schleiermacher wanted to construct a general hermeneutics Wilhelm Dilthey aimed to establish hermeneutics as the universal methodological basis of humanistic sciences and social sciences Martin Heidegger combined hermeneutics with existential ontology and phenomenology and developed ontological hermeneutics Then in 1960 with the publication of Truth and Method by Hans Georg Gadamer philosophical hermeneutics turned up Friedrich Schleiermacher 1768 1834 sought to set up a 7 systematic science of understanding which could guide the process of extracting meaning from a text For Schleiermacher the aim of hermeneutics is the re experiencing and reconstruction of the mental process of the text s author Schleiermacher wished the interpreter to re experience what the author experienced and did not see the utterance apart from the author And understanding is the reverse of composition owing to the truth that it starts with the fixed and finished expression and goes back to the mental life from which it arose But this view makes Schleiermacher fall into bad idealistic metaphysics because such a view may assume that we have privileged access to the meaning of the text outside of time and history Wilhelm Dilthey 1833 1911 as one of the great philosophical thinkers of the late 19th century aimed to establish hermeneutics as the universal methodological basis of humanistic sciences and social sciences In Dilthey s eyes hermeneutics became the theory not merely of text interpretation but of how life disclosed and expressed itself in works For Dilthey the meaning of a text is contextual historical and has changed with time and the interpretation of the literary work of art is set in the context of the historicity of man s self understanding However Dilthey also saw understanding as re experiencing and reconstruction of the author s experience and his quest for objectively valid knowledge was itself a reflection of scientific ideals wholly contrary to the historicity of man s self understanding Both Schleiermacher and Dilthey identified the meaning of the text 8 with the subjective intention of its original author For Schleiermacher and Dilthey the interpreter s own present situation can have only a negative value They regard understanding as a repetition or duplication of the original author s intention as a reproductive procedure rather than a genuinely productive one Hermeneutics has traditionally understood itself as an art or technique Both Schleiermacher and Dilthey pursued the objectively valid understanding through the interpreter s re experiencing and reconstruction of the author s experience This is a reflection of strong objectivism Zhang Derang 2001 Martin Heidegger defined the essence of hermeneutics as the ontological power of understanding and interpretation which renders possible the disclosure of being of things and ultimately of the potentialities of Dasein s own being in his masterpiece Being and Time Richard E Palmer 1969 130 With the analysis combined hermeneutics with existential ontology and phenomenology Heidegger put forward a concept named fore understanding which was composed of fore having fore sight and fore concept For Heidegger because that Dasein being is finite and historical understanding is temporary and the interpreter can t completely get rid of his fore understanding when approaching a text So Heidegger made history become a productive factor in understanding Then a decisive event in the development of modern hermeneutical theory occurred in 1960 with the publication of Truth and Method by Hans Georg Gadamer In this book it presents a 9 critical review of modern aesthetics and theory of historical understanding from a basically Heideggerian perspective as well as a new philosophical hermeneutics based on the ontology of language In this book understanding is not conceived as a subjective process of man over and against an object but the way of being of man himself hermeneutics is not defined as a general help discipline for the humanities but as a philosophical effort to account for understanding as an ontological the ontological process in man Gadamer 2004 162 So with the declaration of these hermeneutical theories different from before Gadamer s philosophical hermeneutics turned up The task of philosophical hermeneutics is ontological rather than methodological It seeks to throw light on the fundamental conditions that underlie the phenomenon of understanding in all its modes and that constitute understanding as an event over which the interpreting subject does not ultimately preside Gadamer developed a conception that understanding is not reconstruction but mediation ibid xvi which takes the interpreter s present participation in history into account Nowadays the development of hermeneutics attracts more and more famous philosophers research such as Emilio Betti J rgen Habermas Paul Ricoeur and so on Emilio Betti 1890 1968 was an Italian philosopher and theologian He built a research institute of hermeneutics in Rome in 1955 J rgen Habermas 1929 is a famous philosopher in Germany and a representative of the critical hermeneutics For Habermas hermeneutics is one dimension of critical 10 social theory Paul Ricoeur 1913 2005 was a French philosopher who was best known for combining phenomenological description with hermeneutic interpretation that is phenomenon hermeneutics 1 2 Basic Concepts in Philosophical Hermeneutics From the introduction in above it can be seen that the development of hermeneutics experienced several stages This thesis will focus on the theory in philosophical hermeneutics which is initiated by Heidegger and developed by Gadamer So the introduction of the basic concepts of philosophical hermeneutics becomes necessary which includes prejudice historicity of understanding and fusion of horizons 1 2 1 Fore Understanding and Prejudice In the book Being and Time Heidegger emphasized the cycle of understanding and pointed out that the first fr