On June 21st, 2019, Prof. Ren Dongsheng, vice dean and Ph. D tutor of the School of Foreign Languages at Ocean University of China, was invited to Huangdao Academic Forum of Liberal Arts and Law. He delivered an academic report entitled “Translator’s visibility and presentation of the translation”. The attendants included Xu Wanzhi, Chairman of the Professor Committee of the College of Arts, Wang Xinbo and Han Shuqin, deputy deans of the College of Arts and some MTI tutors, students and translation enthusiasts both inside and outside the school. The lecture was presided over by Prof. Han Shuqin.
Prof. Ren explored the interaction between translator’ implicit visibility and presentation of the translation through the comparison between three English versions of Su Shi's Prelude to Water Melody Sent to Ziyou on Mid-autumn Festival translated by Lin Yutang, Xu Yuanchong and Sidney Shapiro. Through the analysis of each version, Prof. Ren maintained that that Sidney Shapiro made full use of his advantages of the competence in the target language on the basis of an accurate understanding of the author's intention, which makes his version superior to Lin Yutang's and Xu Yuanchong's explicit translations in terms of the consistency of the expression of the semantic web.
Comparing the works of the three translators, Prof. Ren pointed out that the translator’s visibility cannot be avoided in the translation because of its context, cultural identity, translation intention and so on, which is called “the translator’s visibility”. The visibility can be explicit or implicit. The implicit visibility means that translators unconsciously weave their personal experience, thinking pattern, social and cultural environment into translation version. Prof. Ren also stressed that the interactive relations between the translator’s visibility and the presentation of translation find expression in the tension between necessity and sufficiency, necessary but moderately sufficient in the arrogation of the limits of necessity, so that Chinese classical literature can walk up to foreign readers with the help of the translation that is the closest to the original in the world of target language.
Prof. Ren is a member of China Democratic League, Professor of Ocean University of China, Director of Research Institute of Translation, Council Member of China Comparative Literature Association (CCLA). His research interests include translation theories and translation reflection on religious classics. He has published more than 80 academic papers in journals such as Foreign Languages and Translation, Foreign English in China, Biblical Literature Studies, etc. His publications also include Study on the Tradition of Bible Translation into Chinese (2007), An Introductory Course on Biblical Culture (2012), etc.
