A Comparative Study On The Chinese Versions Of The Scarlet Letter:a Feminist Perspective

In the middle and late 20~thh century,feminist movement developed vigorously in the western world;since the 1980s,translation field has entered into a new era of“cultural turn”.The collision and integration of the two academic trends led to the birth of feminist translation theory in the 1990s,which has brought fresh blood to translation studies.Guided by feminist thoughts,feminist translation has broken the restricted frames of traditional translation theories,redefined the relationship between the author and the translator and reconstructed the concept of fidelity.At the beginning,this theory highlights that female translators are supposed to show subjectivity in the process of translation in order to manifest their gender identity and eliminate the sexual discrimination in the texts.It advocates women to use language as the weapon to fight against the deep-rooted patriarchal thoughts in the society.Now,it also proposes both male and female translators should pursue gender equality in the works.Feminist translation studies have developed into maturity in the west,but relevant investigations started later in China.Generally speaking,domestic researches on feminist translation are still in the developing phase,and scholars mainly give attention to theoretical reviews,female translators’introduction,translation history and translation criticism.The author of this thesis believes the comparative researches from the perspective of feminist translation are far from adequate in China,so more case studies are expected to be carried out.The Scarlet Letter is a significant work in the literary history of the world.In the story,Nathaniel Hawthorne successfully constructed the image of Hester Prynne,a female character with a strong mind,independence,the rebellious spirit and the feminist consciousness.Therefore,this fiction,to some extent,has some feminist elements.However,there are few domestic studies exploring its Chinese versions with the feminist translation theory.To make some supplements,the author conducts a comparative study on the two Chinese versions of The Scarlet Letter from the perspective of this theory.By comparing and contrasting the two translated texts on the linguistic level and the feminist ideological level,this thesis is aimed at further clarifying the great impacts that gender has on translation and then accelerating the spread and development of feminist translation theory in China.The author also hopes to attract more scholars to do relevant researches and together contribute to the improvement of the translation evaluation system as well as the prosperity of the translation studies.The two subjects of this thesis are the translation works of Yao Naiqiang(male)and Wang Yuanyuan(female).With the detailed text analysis,the author summarizes their respective gender characteristics shown in the translation language,and points out their differences in feminist consciousness beneath the words.The examples selected from the two translations disclose the translators differ in words selection,sentence construction and literary style and have distinctions in feminist ideology.Affected by the man-centered culture,Yao Naiqiang shows some patriarchal inclination consciously or unconsciously in the work,while Wang Yuanyuan attempts to eliminate sexual discrimination and pursue gender equality with her words.Based on the above findings,the author restates in the conclusion:gender does exert great influences on translation so it can not be overlooked in the translation studies.