A Comparative Study of Two Translated Versions of Walden in Chinese from the Perspective of the Translator’s Subjectivity

Abstract

The translator plays a vital role in translation activities for receiving and comprehending the source text, and then accomplishing corresponding versions in foreign languages. Translators always strive to translate the source text as accurate as possible. At the same time, they are nurtured and swayed by different social and cultural ideologies that form their rhetorical features during translation. That is to say, translation work reflects translator’ s subjectivity in some degree. This research chooses two translated versions of Walden in Chinese, respectively composed by Xu Chi and Dai Huan, as research subjects and probes into two translators’ subjectivity from two perspectives of translation purposes and strategies. The research aims to illustrate the effects of the translator’s subjectivity on the translation text and contribute to the advancement of the theory of the translator’s subjectivity.