英语硕士论文答辩陈述

Opening Speech

Good afternoon, distinguished professors and everybody here, thank you for attending the oral defense. My name is **. I am really honored to be here to present my thesis to you all and I gratefully welcome any correction.

The title of my paper is Fidelity or Treason: Exercise of the Translator’s Subjectivity in the English Version of Wolf Totem.

I choose this as my topic due to the following reasons. Firstly, I am always interested in the translation and spreading of Chinese contemporary literature. As you all know, although Chinese culture has gradually attracted the world’s attention with China’s rapid development in recent years, the number of Chinese books translated and introduced to the western world is still low. Generally speaking, Chinese contemporary literature is not well accepted by western readers. But Wolf Totem is an exception. It was translated by Howard Goldbaltt in 2008 and has exhibited good market performance. So by this thesis, I want to find the reasons for why the translation of Wolf Totem has become a success, in an attempt to supply an answer to the translation and spreading of Chinese contemporary literature to the western world. Secondly, since the “cultural turn” in 1980s, the issue of the translator’s subjectivity has gradually become a hot research topic. Scholars both at home and abroad have demonstrated an obvious tendency to enhance the translators’status and highlight their subjectivity. Well, this is a welcome change in translation study. However, many are fond of stressing the importance of unbridled play of the translator’s subjectivity, so much so that they pay little attention to the restrictive factors which always greatly influence the exercise the translator’s subjectivity. Thus, how to appropriately exercise the translator’s subjectivity remains to be a controversial issue. So it is also one of my major concerns to find a proper way to judge whether the translator appropriately exercises his subjectivity or not. Thirdly, the translator Howard Goldbaltt holds a set of translation thoughts that fit the very subject of this thesis. On the one hand, he pays due respect to the author, and try to be faithful to the original text, and on the other hand, he agrees that every translation is a betrayal and deems translation as an activity of rewriting to some extent. And his translation thoughts are

embodied in his translation works, including Wolf Totem. In Wolf Totem, efforts to try to strike a balance between “treason” and “fidelity” can be easily detected. These are the major reasons for why I choose this topic.

And now, I will present my thesis to you. Here is an outline of my presentation. This thesis is composed of six parts. Chapter one is an introduction that primarily states the research background, the research significance and the structure of the thesis. Chapter Two is an overview of studies on translator’s subjectivity. It goes over the traditional views on translator’s subjectivity and then the latest studies on this issue since the “cultural turn” both at home and abroad. Chapter Three mainly deals with the issue of translator’s subjectivity. It explains the concepts of subject and subjectivity, expounds the connotation and characteristics of translator’s subjectivity, and discusses its manifestation and restrictive factors during translation. On the basis of these analyses, this thesis avoids the traditional “faithfulness” criterion. Instead, it suggests that the exercise of the translator’s subjectivity can be judged from the following aspects: Firstly, to what extent does the translator convey the elements (like word diction, cultural elements, literary style, major theme and so on) embodied in the original? Secondly, how well is the translated version accepted by the target readers? Thirdly, does the translator build a harmonious relationship with his patrons during translation? Lastly, does the translated version conform to the dominant ideology and poetics in the target culture? Chapter Four briefly introduces the author Jiang Rong, the original text Lang Tuteng, the translator Howard Goldblatt and his translated version Wolf Totem. Chapter Five is the main body of the thesis which deals with Howard Goldblatt’s subjectivity in Wolf Totem translation. Adopting the judging method put forward in Chatper three, it firstly analyzes the factors influencing Goldblatt’s subjectivity in both deciding what to translate and selecting translating strategies, and then moves on to focus on examples taken from the translated version to see how Goldblatt exercises his subjectivity in translating the novel. Finally Chapter six, the concluding part, draws the conclusion that during the process of translation, Goldblatt followed advisable advices from his patrons, adapted the novel