【正文】 ence is inevitable. Therefore we should treat the translation on the basis of a translatorcentered way.At the end of the twentieth century, a number of monographs on the translator were published both in China and the West, notably Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Fame edited by Andre Lefevere, Translation, History and Culture by Andre Lefevere and The Translator’s Invisibility by Lawrence Venuti. In China, Yang Wuneng is one of the scholars who study the issues of the translator’s orientation. In the middle of the 1980s, he proposed that the literary translation should be regarded as a recycle of elucidation, acceptance and creation and we should get the translator’s function and status in this dynamic recycle. And he also proposed a new norm of literary translation “the authorthe originalthe translatorthe translationthe reader” (Xu Jun, 2003b: 347). Since the 1990s, under the influence of western translation theories, Chinese translation scholars have proposed a number of new ideas and approaches. The publication of Liu Miqing’s book Modern Translation Theory in 1999 and Cheng Fukang’s A History of Translation Theory in China in 1992, for example, marked the establishment of translatology as an independent subject. A large number of scholars such as Luo Xinzhang, Yang Wuneng, Mu Lei, Wang Shouren, Yuan Li and so on, began to study the translator, and published many articles on the important role of the translator’s subjectivity in literary translation. Finally, the function and the status of the translator became one of the hot topics in China. The Change of Translator’s role in translationThe activity of translation has grown along with the development of language. It is said that it is even as old as language. Besides its long history, it is also a plex process. And to the translators, the biggest headache will never be the understanding of the meaning of original text, but that of the style of the writer, the tone of the text and the connotation of it. In other words, translators had long been swaying between the concept of “faithfulness” and “betrayal”. But the importance of translator has always been ignored for a long time. People seldom think of the function of translator in the process of translation, because they believe translators are only the tool of transforming the meaning, so there is little to study about them. In the history, the attention that is paid to the translators focuses on the roles they played. The roles kept changing from time to time. The conqueror.The first role is “conqueror”. This image appeared in ancient Rome, when the purpose of translation was absorbing the foreign culture in order to enrich the culture of Rome. So they adopted the way of looting, during which the meanings and implications were not taken into consideration. Saint Jerome declared that the translators should consider the ideas of the original as their prisoners and transplant them into their own language, using the privileges of the conqueror. To Jerome, the translation could and should replace the original text, since the translator was able to create a translation better than the original one.In modern translation theorists, there are still some people who hold similar view point. Professor Xu Yuanchong, for example, holds that the translation should pete with the original and translation should win the petition. But his theory and practices have been criticized in the translation circle. The painterThe second image is “painter”. This image is produced by a famous translator John Dryden. He believed the translator should work as a painter. When the painter is paining, he must make his work look like the original as much as possible. So the translator has the responsibility to reproduce the original as exactly as possible. In other words, he should not change the appearance of the original in any way. It is difficult to represent the spirit totally, so the translator should pay more attention to the overall effect of the translation instead of the more detailed aspects. Fu Lei, a famous translator in modern Chinese translation history, also has similar opinions about the translator. So far as the effect is concerned, translating should be like copying a painting. What should be sought is not similarity in form, but rather similar in spirit. However, they both admitted that the translation is much more difficult than the painting, and the translator is doing a tougher job. Dryden even changed his idea in the late period thinking that the translator is a slave of the author. The slaveHere es the third image, the “Slave”. Gradually the translators and writers have realized that the other languages are not subordinate to their own language, so they began to adopt the equal attitude towards the original one. Translators leant to admit the differences of culture, and translation became a tentative approximation. Schleiemacher put forward that all the power is generated by the original. The translator will yield to the original instead of conquer it. So Charles Batteux reckoned that the translator stand in a secondary position, and original writer is the master while translator is only a slave, who can only go after his master and reproduce the spirit and style devotedly. He can not create anything, nor can he change the original one. In this way, translator’s role is changed from a conqueror to a slave. He must be responsible for original text, for writer and for reader as well. The subordinate position of translator has been maintaining for a long time. The liberatorThe 20th century is the one good for the development of translation, when all kinds of translation theories came out one after another. People study them from different aspects. In his book The Task of the Translator, Walter Benjamin believes that the translation marks their stage of continued life. It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure lan