A Comparative Study Of The Four Chinese Versions Of The Yellow Wallpaper

The feminist translation theory in the west is the product of the combination offeminism and translation theory, which can be traced to the “cultural turn” in1980s. Themost outstanding contribution of feminist translation theory lies in it brings gender issueinto translation study, and thus provides a new research perspective to traditionaltranslation. Since the emergence of feminist translation, it has exerted great impacts onwestern translation theory and practice, and gained fruitful achievements. However, thestudy of feminist translation in domestic is still in the initial period, and most of thestudies are inclined to concentrate on the organization and introduction level, and payless attention on translation practice, especially English to Chinese translation.The Yellow Wallpaper is one of the representative works of Charlotte PerkinsGilman, a famous American feminist writer. The novel narrates a woman’s miserablefate on the basis of Gilman’s own life experience and thus contains abundant feministcharacteristics. The authors of the four selected Chinese versions are: MaJianjun(female), Lin Shuqin(female), Wu Qiyao(male), and Yang Xiaozhao(male)respectively. The thesis aims to take a comparative analysis and reveal the differenttranslation methods employed by different gender translators in the process oftranslating female writer’s work that has strong feminist characteristics from theperspective of feminist translation theory, and discuss whether female translators couldcomprehend and demonstrate the original female characteristics more deeply than maletranslators do, as well as whether male translators could understand femaleconsciousness in the original work from the perspective of feminist.The thesis will take a comparative analysis of the four different versions’translation strategies when they translate the contents with female characteristics in theoriginal work form three linguistic levels, which are: the lexical level, the syntacticallevel and the textual level. And thus to reveal the influences exerted on the translatedversions caused by different gender translators, especially, the Chinese femaletranslators’ comprehension and expression of the original work who affected by feministtranslation theory, and as well as to reveal the phenomenon that female translators are more willing to employ female language and relevant feminist translation strategies tomake women seen and heard in translated versions. For example, in the process oftranslation, female translators are more willing to use supplementing, omission, theauxiliary words of mood, sentence final particles and words with feminist traits toreplace the original words; to employ the representative feminist translation strategies,such as supplementing, hijacking and individualistic translations to intervene theoriginal text; and to use lots of rhetorical devices to translate the original text, in orderto make translator’s female identity seen in the translated version.Above all, the thesis takes a comparative analysis of the different translatedversions of feminist writer’s feminist work on the level of translation strategy from theperspective of feminist translation theory. So as to arouse people’s attention to femaleand feminist translation theory, eliminate gender discriminations in traditional concept,and thus achieve real equality, as well as make a further effort to promote the practiceand development of feminist translation theory in China.