A Comparative Study Of Feminist Consciousness In The Two Chinese Versions Of The Color Purple

Since the"cultural turn"in translation studies field from the 1990s, a new topic"feminist translation"which originated from the combination of feminism, gender and translation, has become an increasingly prominent current direction in the translation study. A group of feminist critics and translators emerged, such as Sussane de Lotbiniere-Harwood, Lori Chamberlain, Luise Von Flotow and Barbara Godard etc. They studied translation from a gender-study perspective, aiming at revealing male-orientations and gender prejudices in literature works and translations. Luise Von Flotow summed up three feminist translation strategies which are"supplementing","prefacing and footnoting"and"hijacking". Introduced into China by Zhu Hong in the 1980s, feminism began to exert significant impact on the study and criticism of foreign literature, especially female literature.The thesis, by adopting feminist translation theory as its theoretical frame work, using comparative methodology, discussed how different translators of different genders translate the sentences concerning feminine features in the versions of The Color Purple,which were translated by Tao Jie and Yang Renjing separately. It is hoped to find out how feminist theory influences translators in their translation practice, how feminist uplift women's social status in their translation, and further hope to lead a wide application of this theory to the English-Chinese translation practice.The thesis consists of six chapters. The first chapter mainly introduces the definition of feminism, research background, the objectives and significance. The second chapter, the researcher firstly reviews studies on feminist translation and studies on The Color Purple in western world and in China. The third chapter concerns the theoretical framework used in the study. The fourth chapter concerns the research design, in which the researcher states the research questions, research methodology and data collection. The fifth chapter was research procedure, two versions are compared and analyzed in details, to find out in what way do female translators emphasize the subjectivity of the translator; and how do translators apply feminist translation strategies during their translation of the sentences concerning feminine physiological features, women's appearance, feeling and sexual description, to manifest their feminist consciousness and to uplift women's social status. Finally, the following conclusions are drawn in the sixth chapter:(1) female translator Tao Jie tends to show more feminist consciousness in her translation comparing with male translator Yang Renjing by stressing independence and equality, to strengthen female aesthetic effect and the female's feature lively and vividly, to challenge the patriarchal language and to arise women's self-recognition and spiritual liberation, to eliminate men's discrimination towards women, further uplift women's self-social status and getting independent from body and soul, and getting equal right with men. (2)Female translator has not escaped from the patriarchy dominance completely. She even could not be so sensitive for feminist translation as male translator occasionally. To a certain extent, it is because that she has not escaped from patriarchy dominance completely and was still influenced by patriarchal thought that patriarchal society instilled to her.(3) Male translator also manifests feminist consciousness in his translation in some occasion. On one hand, he was influenced by feminist translation theory that brought in China; on the other hand, male translator has sympathy on those women who are under humiliation and oppression of the patriarchal dominance. So he wants to help them to get released.