A Study on Self-Translation of Taipei People From the Perspective of Translator’s Subjectivity

Abstract

Based on translator’s subjectivity and Chinese-English corpus, this paper analyzes Pai Hsien-yung’s self-translation of Taipei People in terms of subjective initiative, passivity and purposefulness. The self-translation is concise, intelligible and fluent, reproducing the original spirit and style to the greatest extent and exactly implying translator’s active intervention. The author as a translator meanwhile can both exert great subjectivity and be constrained by his own political stand, cultural background, translation purpose as well as specific social and historical background. The bilingual self-translator tends to show a complete understanding of the original text and focus on the deep meaning of the original text. The source text is revised appropriately to make the translation more readable and acceptable to the target readers.