On Feminist Translation In Literary Translation And Manifestation Of Translator's Subjectivity

Western translation studies took its culture turn in the 1970s and translation studywas recognized to be a separate discipline. Since then feminist translation theorybegan to attract the attention of scholars. For feminism has long been influenced bydeconstrnctionism, post-colonialism, cultural studies etc, feminist translators treattranslation as a political activity, and stress the translating subject from theperspective of women. Translation theorists at home and abroad not only put muchemphasis on it, but also bring about various kinds of theoretical ideas.In western countries, the representatives of feminism translation theory includeLuise von Flotow, Sherry Simon, and Lori Chamberlain etc. Sherry Simon publishedher feminist translation monograph Gender in translation: Cultural Identity and thePolitics of Transmission in 1996. The following year, Luise Von Flotow publishedTranslation and Gender: Translation in the 'Era of Feminism'. They all hold theopinion that women should manipulate the language to make them be noticed in thereal world.In China, the feminist thought was first introduced into China in 1980s byProfessor Zhu Hong, but it failed to attract scholars' attention at that time. It was notuntil 2000 that scholars began to pay attention to its effect on translation. Scholarslike Liao Qiyi, Meng Xiangzheng, Xu lai, Zhang Jinghua began to probe into therelationship between feminism and translation. In 2004, Chinese Translators Journalpublished several articles about feminist translation. These articles state thesignificance of the feminism translation theory in the study of the translator'ssubjectivity and broaden the studies of translator's subjectivity.As for translator's subjectivity, it has been conducted from many perspectives, butthis issue is seldom addressed from a gender perspective. The study of translator'ssubjectivity from the perspective of feminist translation theory has its uniqueness, itmainly lies in the following two points: On the one hand, it takes the gender factorinto consideration, which has been neglected for quite a long time. On the other hand, feminist translators make use of the factor "subjectivity", and advocate that translation will provide a good opportunity of rewriting for woman to rebel against the maledomination and discrimination of female.Based on this phenomenon, this thesis aims to make an exploration of thetranslator's subjectivity in feminist translation. Although there are many articles aboutabsolute feminist translation theories, there are few themes combining theory andpractice together, in the thesis the author wants to compare two Chinese versions ofWuthering Heights done respectively be feminist translator and non-feministtranslator and to find out the differences between them in handling the language andthe choice of translation strategies.The first chapter of the paper introduces feminism and its influence, especially itsimpact on translation studies. There exists three aspects of impact, firstly itemphasizes on the subjectivity from the perspective of feminism. Secondly, itemphasizes that translation is a political action. Lastly, it asks for removal of genderdiscrimination in translation study. After that is literature review, which introduces theacademic achievements in this field and the methods the author adopts in the thesis.The second chapter briefly introduces the emergence of feminist translation theory, the main theoretical ideas and the translation strategies which feminist translatorsusually employ, such as supplanting, prefacing and footnoting, hijacking. Thesefeminist translators want to avert readers' attention to the existence of female imagesin the text via these "strange and novel" expressions.The third chapter puts emphasis on feminist translation in literary translation andmanifestation of translator's subjectivity. It introduces the connotation and theessential factors of translator's subjectivity and its association with feministtranslation. It has been pointed out that gender is a very important perspective in thestudy of subjectivity. Then the reflection on feminist translator's subjectivity isnarrated.The fourth chapter is the most important part of the thesis, it is the case study ofthe two Chinese versions of Wuthering Heights to demonstrate the differencesbetween feminist translator and non-feminist translator during the process oftranslation. The thesis analyses the two versions from five aspects: prefacing and footnoting, level of formality of language, aesthetic sense, expletives and addressingforms. The comparison of the two versions does show some differences in the choiceof texts, language features and the choice of translation strategies, and tells the readernon-feminist translator often consciously or unconsciously uses some wordsconcerning the degradation of women. On the contrary, feminist translator prefers touse words and expressions for rebuilding women's identity.The last chapter is a brief conclusion of the thesis, the author summarizes thewhole thesis and narrates the major findings, the implications and the limitations ofthe study.During the process of study, textual analysis is the main method that is employed, the author analyses the two versions in five aspects, and in the theme some specificexamples from the two Chinese versions of Wuthering Heights will be given. Thecomparison of the two versions shows some differences between feminist translatorand non-feminist translator, it will help researchers to think about the development oftranslation studies and figure out the problem it is confronting with. In the translationprocess, translators are supposed to present the target readers a true picture of theoriginal text and culture by means of more objective attitude or effective approaches.