Construction Path and Theoretical Significance of George Steiner’s "Translator" Model

After Babel: Aspects of language and translation is an important work on language and translation presented by contemporary literary critic George Steiner.It has been widely recognized by scholars as a seminal work of translation studies that employs hermeneutic approaches.The mutual influence between translation studies and hermeneutics in this work lies not only in the methodological value of hermeneutics embodied in "four steps of translation", but also in the "translator" as a hermeneutic model which underscores the paradigmatic significance of translation to modern hermeneutics.Based on a contrapuntal reading of After Babel vis-à-vis modern hermeneutics works, this paper investigates the reasons for the construction of the "translator" model from three aspects, theoretical sources, hypothesizing, and perspectives on meaning, to uncover its theoretical significance in relation to understanding subject, hermeneutic motion, and hermeneutic task.