Feminist Translation Studies From Gender Perspective

Feminist translation theory is the offspring of the latest development in translation studies and feminist movement. With the development of feminism studies, the researchers pay much more attention to the limitation of female perspective, so they proposed a new perspective–Gender Perspective, from which Gender Studies is generated. Gender studies provides us the methodology for recognizing the gender roles, acknowledging the differences but not being constrained by differences. The birth of this theory is helpful to broaden the view of feminists'study, making them out of the single perspective.Therefore, this thesis tentatively applies gender studies to feminist translation and to some extend perfect feminist translation theory.First of all, this thesis believes that gender studies provides a new perspective for feminism and feminist translation studies and still plays a vital role in perfecting feminist translation theory.Secondly, the thesis has elaborated on the relation between gender studies and feminist translation, expounding both the positivity and the limitation of feminist translation theory from gender perspective. Based on the theoretical analysis of gender studies and feminist translation, the author then makes a comparative study on the two different translated versions of Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook, which is said to be"the Bible of feminism"and deeply influenced by androgyny. Through such comparison, the thesis aims to indicate the differences existing in the understandings and linguistic expressions between two translators, who are the same sex. Gu Tao, one of the translators of The Golden Notebook, as a male translator, subconsciously, adopts more radical feminist translation strategies because of being affected by feminist thoughts. While Chen Caiyu, another translator of The Golden Notebook, is sensitive to the feminine features in the source text and adopts androgynous perspective rather than radical feminist perspective. Based on the above analysis, the thesis suggests feminists adopting androgynous translation strategy.Lastly, the author suggests that more cross-theory and cross-discipline studies should be considered in future and thinks that feminist translation still awaits further development in China.