| Modern feminist movements which start in the mid 19th century have mainly experienced "three waves". Fighting for "rights", seeking for "equality" and focusing on "gender differences" are major targets of the three waves respectively. With the vigorous development of feminist movements, feminist theories have also mushroomed and had profound effects on the fields of culture, art, etc.Since the 1970s, translation studies from the cultural perspective have greatly developed under the influence of "the cultural turn" in translation. There is no escaping the fact that the popularity of feminism in various domains has exerted some impacts on translation studies, for the reason that they are both viewed as parts of culture studies. The alliance between feminism and translation studies awakens the translators'gender awareness which exerts great impacts on translation studies including translation theory, translation practice and translation criticism. In translation practice, translators with feminist awareness are keen on unearthing and translating the works of excellent female writers that were neglected or denigrated in patriarchy with the aim of making the information relative to the female writers and their works known to all. Meanwhile, feminist translators explicitly manifested their political stand and intention via using various translation strategies, such as supplementing, prefacing and footnoting, and "hijacking". The feminist translators are aware of the fact that the present translation has been gendered due to the shared inferior status of both female and translation in their own hierarchical systems respectively. Feminist translation theories boldly question and reconstruct the "fidelity" and "ethics" of the traditional translation studies with an emphasis on translators'subjectivity. With the development of feminist theories, gender awareness also broadens the research perspectives on translation criticism. After studying on considerable translations, critics with gender awareness discover the misrepresentation of female image and female experience in translation which have never been realized from any other perspective. As a brand-new perspective, gender has become a significant category in translation criticism as well as one of the most heated topics in translation studies.Since early 1980s, feminism has begun to influence Chinese foreign literature study and feminist literature criticism. However, it did not attract the attention from Chinese translation circle until the end of the 20th century. The year 2004 witnessed the first climax of feminist translation in China with the 11 papers published in public. In 2005, Professor Fei Xiaoping from Sichuan University finished his book which specializes in feminist translation for the first time in China. In the following years, due to the publication of a great number of papers (in accordance with CNKI database: 20 papers in 2005,22 papers in 2006,51 papers in 2007,66 papers in 2008), feminist translation in China has stepped into a promising era. By the end of the year 2009, there have been altogether 228 papers and two books on feminist translation studies published academically in mainland China, according to CNKI database.There is no denying that feminist translation broadens the research perspectives of Chinese translation studies, and accelerates the speed of its development. But compared to the maturity and prosperity of the Western feminist translation, studies on translation from gender perspective in China are still at the initial stage with unavoidable shortcomings. The existing shortcomings are umbilically linked to the unique historical and cultural backgrounds of China. Firstly, Chinese women strive for equal rights by cooperatively participating in the liberations led by men instead of organizing their own feminist movements. The role of "assistant" makes Chinese women miss the stage of forming their own feminist theories, but submit to the theoretical system controlled by men. This gives rise to the current problem of Chinese feminist translation dealing mainly with the introduction and reviews of Western feminist translation theories. Secondly, Chinese thousands-of-year cultural traditions endow Chinese women with the traits of obedience and tolerance. In ancient China, women were required to obey their father before getting married. They should obey their husband after marriage, and they had to obey their son after the death of the husband. Consequently, as for inequalities, Chinese feminists do not behave as radical as their Western coteries. This inevitably leads to the milder translation strategies being used in Chinese feminist translation practice. Chinese feminist translators are more inclined to show their gender consciousness and female identity via word choice, language expression, change of the order and other milder translation strategies, but seldom by way of "hijacking". Undoubtedly, being mild in translation practice is one of the significant features of Chinese feminist translation. But it also has some negative impacts on the writing of the academic papers, for instance, being influenced by "mildness", many of the papers on feminist translation seem lack of profundity and a great number of case studies are not convincing enough.This thesis aims to talk about the local adoption of gendered translation in China and to investigate gender's effects on translators'translation practice by making a comparative analysis on the two Chinese versions of Jane Austen's Emma from gender perspective under the rubric of feminist translation theory.The following four research questions are discussed in this thesis:Q1:Is gender a factor which may influence the translator's translation practice in China?Q2:As to the translation of a feminist work, is it true for the female translator to understand and translate from the utter female perspective?Q3:Is it possible for the male translator to translate from "her" perspective?Q4:In feminist translation practice, should we encourage females to translate feminist texts only or support the idea of translator's androgyny?Androgyny is a term which derives from Greek mythology and is made up of two parts, namely 'andro'(male) and 'gyn'(female). This word is used to describe the mixture of both male and female psychological and physical elements in one individual. (Leonardi 2007:59)After the comparative analysis of the two Chinese versions,22 examples are selected as arguments. They are classified into two categories:comprehension and expression. And the impacts gender exerts on translation are shown from the following six aspects:views on marriage, aesthetic standards, psychological distance, word choice, translation strategies and the implied meaning. The following conclusions are drawn from the comparative analysis of the examples selected.1) Gender, similar to other cultural identities, is a factor which influences translators' translation practice in China.2) It is not true that the female translator could absolutely understand the feminist original well and translate it from the utter female perspective.3) It is not impossible for the male translator to translate from the other gender perspective.We should admit that it is possible for the male translator to translate from "her" perspective, but according to the analysis of the examples, one may realize that this change of gender perspective occurs occasionally rather than systematically. So the male translator in this thesis is not able to be viewed as a translator of androgyny. Meanwhile, although the female translator manages to manifest her feminist consciousness here and there, from the preface to the understanding of the source text, from addition to rewording, it is not difficult for readers to find that her feminist consciousness is not always clear and steady, and sometimes her translation can not escape the impact of patriarchy. as discussed above. Since her feminist consciousness is incomplete and could not be taken as a sufficient argument for the feasibility of females translating feminist works only. In other words, due to the unique historical and social conditions in China, it is impossible for a female translator to thoroughly get rid of the influence of the patriarchal ideology and become an utter feminist translator. The assumption that the feminist works should be translated by females only seems unsteady. Meanwhile, the male translator's occasional and fragmentary manifestation of thinking from "her" perspective could only prove the possibility rather than the realization of "androgyny" in Chinese context. Consequently, my last research question came to no exact conclusion, but it inspires me to think about the issue of degree in translation from gender perspective.The manifestation of a translator's gender consciousness depends on the coincidence degree of the translator's existing cognition and gender consciousness with the author's gender perspective. Supposing there is a continuum of gender consciousness with the male consciousness and the female consciousness as the two poles, different degrees of coincidence are the variables on the continuum. Let's take the translation of a feminist text for example. Taking the male consciousness as the reference point, the higher the coincidence degree is, the nearer it is approaching to the female consciousness point, and the overlap with the female consciousness point means the realization of androgyny. That is to say, if the male translator is of female consciousness, it means there exists coincidence between the translator's and the author's gender perspectives. If the male translator's female consciousness is stronger, the degree of the coincidence is higher. Thus the author's female consciousness shown in the text can be sensed and conveyed better. The likelihood of achieving translator's androgyny becomes greater. On the contrary, if the translator is of mere male consciousness which deviates from the author's female perspective, it means there isn't the coincidence between the translator and the author's gender consciousness. This will lead to nothing but the deviation of comprehension and the appearance of the unsatisfied translation. Because translator's androgyny is not only applicable to men but also to women, texts written by male writers could also be argued by analogy. As Sherry Simon states "Gender issues in translation are relevant to men as well to women. Men can adopt the precepts of feminist translation theory; women can successfully translate texts by men." (Simon 1996:159)To sum up, with the advance of the researches on gender issues in translation field, Chinese translators'gender consciousness is sure to be improved and the coincidence degree between the translator's and the author's gender consciousness tends to become higher and higher. Translators of androgyny will emerge in large numbers in China.There exist some limitations in this research. To begin with, since feminist translation study in China is at its initiative stage and is still a field full of controversy, this research may not provide more convincing results with the author's limited knowledge, capacity and time. Furthermore, the corpus selected (one source text and two translations) is too small and the examples were chosen and interpreted according to the author's subjective criteria. These all may cause the research results lack of universality. But this thesis still aims to enrich the empirical study of Chinese feminist translation with an expectation of making some contribution to the development of feminist translation practice in China.
|
PDF Full Text Request