The Reduction of Ethnicity in Myths from the Perspective of Translator’s Subjectivity

As a treasure of human civilization, myths carry the historical and cultural essence of various ethnic groups. The accurate communication of their ethnicity is particularly important in cross-cultural communication. This study focuses on the challenge in conveying ethnicity elements in the translation of myths, taking William Butler Yeats’ book The Celtic Twilight as an example, and discusses in depth the important role of translator’s subjectivity in the translation process. The study analyses two translation versions, and explores different translators’ subjectivity in the translation of myths and its impact on the reduction of ethnicity. The study hypothesizes that the translator’s cultural cognition, translation strategies and reader considerations will affect the way he or she handles the culture-loaded words, which in turn affects the effect of the reduction of ethnicity. It is shown that both translators mainly adopt alienation to translate culture-loaded words, but there are differences in their specific strategies. On the whole, both versions are good applications of the translator’s subjectivity theory. The culture-loaded words are translated faithfully and accurately, which to a certain extent restore the ethnicity in the myths, and reflect the inheritance of the cultural values of the originals.