A Comparative Study Of Novel Translation Under Feminist Translation Theory

The emergence of feminist translation theory,a combination of feminism and translation,derives from the development of feminist movement against the background of the “cultural turn” of translation.In the 1990 s,the theory was introduced into China,which had a great influence on the traditional translation theory.In the past two decades,the main exploration of Chinese feminist translation studies has centered on the history and development of the theory,with only a handful of empirical studies.Based on this,this thesis,through making a comparative study of two Chinese versions of Lolita from the perspective of feminist translation theory,makes an exploration of how female translators apply feminist translation strategies to highlight feminist consciousness and improve their status,in what way the gender identity of male and female translators is expressed at the linguistic level,and what the differences are between male and female translators in describing the language,character,appearance and behavior of female in the novel being.Lolita is a representative work of Russian American writer Vladimir Nabokov renowned at home and abroad,which tells the unruly love story between a middle-aged man and a minor girl.There are more than ten translations of this book in China,each with their own different translation styles as well as merits and demerits.This thesis chooses the most influential versions of Yu Xiaodan(female)and Zhu Wan(male)as the research objects,comparing the translation characteristics of the two versions by comparative analysis approach and explaining the chosen examples by case analysis approach.Through the application of feminist translation theory and the comparative analysis of the corpus,this study has the following main findings: firstly,a variety of feminist translation strategies are employed by the female translator Yu Xiaodan who has given full play to the translator’s subjectivity,and at the same time improved and highlighted the social status and public image of women;secondly,at the linguisticlevel,the gender identity of translators is mainly reflected in the fact that female translators have a preference to using sentence final particles,euphemisms and reduplicated words,while male translators have a preference for taboos;thirdly,when describing the language,character,appearance and behavior of female in the novel,female translators are more civilized and milder than male translators in the use of words,who are more biased and tolerant towards women,especially when it comes to the description of their shortcomings.Since Lolita was introduced into China,most of the studies on it have focused on its artistic style and artistic means.The study of Lolita translation in this thesis undoubtedly provides a new perspective for the academic community.In addition,the comparative analysis of the two Chinese versions of Lolita not only annotates the concrete application of feminist translation theory,but also broadens the practice of the theory.