A Study Of Gender Identity In Lolita Translation From The Perspective Of Feminist Translation Theory

The novel Lolita which composed by Russian American writer Vladimir Nabokov,received lots of controversy after published in 1955 in Paris.It was prohibited in many countries due to the sensitive subject and Nabokov was criticized for writing the book.However,people treat the novel differently with the past of the time and its literature and aesthetic value started to be recognized and approved.It had been translated into many other different languages and published in almost every country.It’s also on the list of "Best English-Language Novels of the 20th Century".The first Chinese version of Lolita was published in Taiwan and so far there are over twenty Chinese versions of this story.But all the translation versions were published before 2005 and there is no newly-published version in ten years.Most translation study of this novel at home focused on the comparative study on text form and content analysis and only a few scholars analyze the text from gender perspective.Thus,this thesis is going to do a translation study of gender identity text in Lolita from the perspective of feminist translation theory and make further discussion on the influence of translator’s gender on literary translation.Feminist translation theory is the first translation theory that lead gender factor in and it became a unique perspective to do translation research since 1960s.The purpose of feminist translation theory is to change the current affiliated situation of translation and female by changing the situation that translation works are now treated as by-product of literary works.This thesis sorted and analyzed female translator Jianren Huang’s translation of gender identity text in Lolita.And the main research problems are:First,clarify the types of gender identity texts in Lolita and if these gender identity texts affected images of female characters?And what is readers’reaction of them?Second,figure out how female translator translated gender identity texts under the guidance of feminist translation theory?Which is the most commonly used feminist translation method?How these methods effect readers’ cognition of characters?Third,investigate the contributions made by female translator in translating Lolita,and discuss the value of feminist translation theory.Meantime,this thesis discusses other questions showed in translation work.For example,is it unavoidable that female translators also have patriarchy consciousness?How to understand the concept of "fidelity" in feminist translation theory which is different from that in traditional translation theory?All in all,this thesis is to present the value of feminist translation theory in translation practice and investigate how to use it better into theory and practice by discussing questions in this paper.The results showed that:①There are gender identity texts in the novel Lolita and there are more implicit gender identities than explicit gender identities;②female translator Jianren Huang used feminist translation theory and methods to reduce and alleviate gender identities in source text,however,these approaches only worked in some extent due to the limitation of source text,and gender identity can’t be eliminated in literary works;③according to the results of questionnaires,feminist translation approaches have obvious influence on readers and they can accept adjustment that translator did in target text;④explicit gender identities were mostly designed by author to shape characters in literary works while implicit gender identities might wrote by author unconsciously.