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As an outstanding translator, Professor Zhang Peiji has been engaged in the translation career of Chinese to English for more than 50 years. His translation practices have made tremendous contributions to the translation circle and cultural exchanges, especially his prose translation. And his best-known achievement is the book of Selected Modern Chinese Essays. However, until now, researches on his prose translation have been limited. Some scholars wrote a limited number of papers on Zhang’s translation style or analyzed the book Selected Modern Chinese Essays as a whole. And others only focused on some examples cited from his translation works. For example, Zhou Suwen has given an analysis of the Selected Modern Chinese Essays from the aspect of prose style. Zhu Manhua has made a linguistic analysis of Zhang Peiji’s prose translation in his article Comments on the Version of the Selected Modern Chinese Prose Writings.
In the Selected Modern Chinese Essays, Zhang’s translation of Peanuts which is a famous essay written by Xu Dishan is widespread with great research value. Therefore, this paper taking Zhang Peiji’s translation of Peanuts as a case study intends to investigate the translator’s subjectivity in the dynamic process of Zhang’s prose translation, and thus to enrich the current researches on Zhang Peiji’s prose translation from different aspects and promote the construction of translation theories. The investigation mainly focuses on two levels—the macro level and the micro level. The macro level includes the factors which are beyond translation process, such as the comprehension of source text，translation purpose, translation methods, while the micro level mainly discusses the translation process including the expressing of the source text in the target language．
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2.1 Definition of the Translator’s Subjectivity
Hatim and Mason have pointed out: “Inevitably, both translating and discussing translations involve making judgments. There seems to be little processing itself. Every reading of a text is a unique, unrepeatable act and a text is bound to evoke differing responses in different receivers.”(Hatim and Mason, 2001: 162)This brought the importance of the translator’s subjectivity in the translation process. During the translation process, the translator is unavoidably restricted by many conditions and factors. Just because of those constraints of the linguistic and cultural discrepancies, the translator possesses some creative room to achieve various translation purposes. And the translator should display his great creativity in the limited space. As the famous scholar Liu Miqing pointed out, “the whole translation activity is a process in which the translator makes full use of his subjective initiative to overcome those objective restrictions.”(Liu Miqing, 2005: 60)
Zha Mingjian holds that the translator’s subjectivity refers to “the subjective initiative employed by the translator as the subject of translation in order to achieve the translation purpose under the premise of respecting the source text. And its basic characteristics include the translator’s conscious cultural awareness, humanistic character and aesthetic creativity. ” (Zha Mingjian & Tian Yu, 2001: 22) Xu Jun also gives a definition of the translator’s subjectivity. He points out that “the so-called translator’s subjective consciousness is the conscious awareness of personality and creativity during the translation process. The existence and strength of the translator’s subjectivity directly affect the whole translation process and translation outcome, namely, the value of the translated work.”(Xu Jun, 2003: 9)
Based on the above opinions proposed by different scholars, in this paper the translator’s subjectivity will be defined as the subjective initiative of the translator presented during the whole translation process in order to fulfill a certain purpose. Its major features are displayed in the translator’s selection and comprehension of the source text, translation purpose, translation methods, the expressing of the original text and so on. And the translator’s subjectivity will be affected by his or her personality, literary talent, aesthetical and translating preference.