A Corpus-Based Study Of Translator’s Gender Difference In Chinese Versions Of The Color Purple

Translation practice is influenced by gender, language. Gender leads to difference of language which results in gender difference of translation because translation is bilingual shift. In addition, gender’s influence on translation has attracted more and more attention with the development of feminist movement and cultural turn.The Color Purple, as a feminist work by Alice Walker, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1983. It reflects that women grow up gradually and fight against under the oppression of men. So it is a good case in the analysis of gender difference in translation.Based on previous relevant studies and two Chinese versions of The Color Purple from female translator Tao Jie and male translator Yang Renjing, this thesis discusses the following questions from the perspective of lexicon choice and pragmatic use by corpus. First, does male and female translator make influence on the choice of lexical? If it does, how is gender difference is expressed? Second, is gender difference of translation caused by inherent gender difference of language or gender’s awareness of translator? Third, does female translator at home translate feminist works in objective attitude without beautifying the image of women or weakening image of men? Fourth, is there possibility that men translate feminist works from“her” perspective?The conclusions are drawn from comparative analysis of corpus data. First, there are gender difference in choice of pronouns, modal particles, modality adverbs, degree adverbs,conjunctions, hedges and swear words. Some of them are caused by language habit and some of them by gender awareness. Second, woman has better translation of emotion and intention in original text in objective attitude without interfering or hijacking original text. Sometimes male translator weakens the words which make women’s image prominent in original text under the influence of patriarchy. Finally, male translator makes an attempt to intimate women’s language from “her” perspective but he does not do well in understanding of emotion and content.This thesis compares gender difference of translation from perspective of lexicon and pragmatics on the basis of data by corpus and makes analysis of gender difference as objective as possible. This thesis provides reference data and makes up for the deficiency in previous relevant studies in corpus data and objectivity.