【正文】 anslator cannot be excluded from his preunderstanding which certainly includes his aesthetic tendency and cultural orientation molded by his education, experiences and social background, in the plex process of interaction with the source text. Thus, both subjective and objective factors inevitably interfere in the translator’s interpretation of the source text, so that any translation, to some degree, will reflect the translator’s own mental outlook and idiosyncrasies, namely the translator’s subjectivity.Apart from the great impact of literary approach on the study of translators, the development of contemporary translation theories since the 1970s such as Skopostheorie, Feminist approaches, Postcolonial approaches, etc. provides fertile soil in this emerging field.According to Skopostheorie, any translating can be regarded as an action and any action has its purpose. The topranking rule for any translation is the “Skopos rule”, which says that “the end justifies the means” (Reiss and Vermeer 1984:101, cit. Nord 2001:29). It means that translation strategies and methods are determined by the purpose and the intended function of the target text. This theory goes beyond the traditional equivalencebased translation views, and is intended to solve the eternal dilemmas of “l(fā)iteral translation” vs. “free translation”, “dynamic equivalence” vs. “formal equivalence”, “domestication” vs. “foreignization” and so on, which have puzzled the translation circle over a long period of time. The translator can adopt the way of wordforword translation, or employ the method of plete rewriting or use any translation strategies between these two extremes, depending on the purpose for which the translation is needed. Therefore, Skopostheorie gives the translator a new perspective to decide which strategy will be employed in the whole process, which undoubtedly manifests the subjective status of the translator in translation activity.Feminist approaches to translation also focus their attention on the target text as well as the translator, and distrusts the utmost authority of the source text. The feminist theorists see a parallel between the status of translation, which is often considered to be derivative and inferior to the source text, and that of women, so often repressed in society and literature. This is the core of feminist translation theory, which seeks to identify and criticize the tangle of concepts that relegates both women and translation to the bottom of the social and literary ladder (Li Heqing, 2005:134). Feminist theorists advocate the visibility of translators, and require that translators be freed from the yoke of the source text and that the target text acquire equal status as that of the source text. It highlights the importance of the cultural context in which the translation is done and the translator’s subjective status in translation activity.From the contemporary translation theories above, we can see that the translator’s humble position has been elevated to a great extent and his subjective status has bee more and more visible in the study of translation. These contemporary translation studies exhibit very wide academic horizon by a variety of innovative views on translation issues from different perspectives. Evidently, these innovative views are not directly aimed to bring the translator’s subjectivity to the foreground, but they cannot rule out the translator and his subjectivity in the discussion of a particular perspective since their focuses are inevitably related to the translator’s subjectivity, such as his translation purpose, ideology and cultural orientation, etc. Therefore we can conclude that although the contemporary translation studies in the West do not ment on translator’s subjectivity in a direct way and there is no specialized academic writing devoted wholly to this area, their innovative findings provide a good foundation for the study of translator’s subjectivity. In recent years, academic writings on translator’s subjectivity have increasingly appeared in China, which make the study of translation subject more significant. The Study on the Translator’s Subjectivity in ChinaAs a matter of fact, the study on individual translators in China has a long history. It can be traced back to the age of Yan Cong (彥琮) (557610). In his essay Bian Zheng Lun, he put forward eight qualifications for translators, which he thought a qualified translator must possess when translating Buddhist Scriptures. According to Chen Fukang (2000:29), Yan Cong is the earliest person to make a systematic discussion on the subject of translation activity—the translator himself in the history of Chinese translation criticism. Since then, some other scholars continued to attach importance to individual translators, but their voices about translators were weaker than other translation concerns. Under the tremendous influence of contemporary literary and translation theories as well as discoveries in other academic disciplines such as history, anthropology, psychology, etc., increasing attention has been paid to the study of translators and studies on outstanding translators have began to e in press since the 1980s, such as Lin Shuh’s Translation written by Qian Zhongshu, On the Translator Yan Fu by Gao Huiqun and Wu Chuangun, Fu Lei and His World by Jin Shenghua and so on.However, the real systematic study on the translator’s subjective aspect and subjectivity has appeared only in recent years. Many Chinese scholars have carried out researches on the roles the translator plays in translation activity. Yang Wuneng (1987:3) declares that the translator is doubtlessly at a pivot position during the whole creative activity, playing the most active role in literary translation. He (2003:12) proposes that the translator is the subject of literary translation and the research on translators should bee an important integral part of translation studies. He calls on people to respe