A Study On The Feminist Consciousness In The Two Chinese Versions Of Pride And Prejudice

With the appearance and development of "culture turn",more and more scholars begin to pay attention to feminism and the application of translation theories.In the patriarchy society,gender differences have existed for a long time and women are suffering all kinds of oppression.The development of western feminist movement awakens the feminist consciousness of traditional women.They begin to search for equal rights with men in economy,politics,culture,family life and education.With the rapid development of feminist movement,scholars of literature field begin to realize the importance of feminism on literary creation and the translation of literary works.Thus,feminist translation theory comes into being.Feminist translation theory emphasizes translator's subjectivity,and opposes the traditional idea that translator's status is lower than writer's.The main purpose of feminist translation theory is to improve translator's status in literary creation.Translators with feminist consciousness will "rewrite" the work through translation strategies like prefacing,footnoting and supplementing,and fully display their feminist consciousness in their translation versions.This thesis aims to make a comparative study of two Chinese versions of Pride and Prejudice.Pride and Prejudice is written by female writer Jane Austen and it is a work full of feminist consciousness.The present author chooses two versions translated by male translator Sun Zhili and female translator Lei Limei respectively.Through the comparative study,the author wants to find feminist consciousness presented in these two versions and verify whether gender is related to feminist consciousness and whether only works translated by female translators have feminist consciousness.This thesis consists of five chapters.Chapter One is the introduction that introduces the research background,research significance and research methodology of this thesis.Chapter Two is the literature review,which summarizes and reviews domestic and overseas development situation and application of feminist translation theory.Chapter Three is the theoretical basis and it explains three important terminologies of feminist translation theory---feminism,feminist consciousness and translator's subjectivity.Chapter Four is the case analysis and it is the most important chapter of this thesis.In this chapter,the present author makes a comparative study of the two Chinese versions of Pride and Prejudice from three aspects---language expression,aesthetic standard and translation strategy,and aims to find out whether Sun and Lei have feminist consciousness.Chapter Five is the conclusion.After the comparative study of Sun's and Lei's version,the present author finds that both of the two versions have feminist consciousness.It breaks up the old idea that only female translator has feminist consciousness.The study shows that Sun Zhili,as a representative of male translators,not only shows plenty of feminist consciousness in his version,but also presents more feminist consciousness than female translator Lei Limei in some words and sentences.Above all,this thesis considers that feminist consciousness has no connection with the gender of translator.Both male translator and female translator can present their feminist consciousness in their versions by showing translator's subjectivity.Feminist translation theory has great effect on the translation of feminist literary works.