La Jeunesse And The Early Feminist Translation In China

Since the 1970s, translation studies has been under the sway of the cultural turn, in which feminist translation is included as one of its important fields of research. The study of feminist translation shows the interdisciplinary nature of translation studies. Translatresses tend to show their ideology as feminist by way of manipulation and rewriting of the original text.This thesis intends to make a study of some translatresses in early modern China in the perspectives of cultural studies and feminism. La Jeunesse, edited firstly by Chen Duxiu, played an important role in transmitting new culture and literature during the May 4^th Movement. As pioneering translatresses in early modern China, Xue Qiying, Wu Ruonan and Shen Xingren had their literary translations published in La Jeunesse, which greatly helped to enhance women's social awareness and status, especially in the literary circles. Influenced by the cultural context the three translatresses made great contributions to the feminist ideology, which was responsible for their specific manipulations and other strategies such as rewriting some words and expressions in order to control power of discourse. They also contributed a lot to the development of modern Chinese literature. Hence their efforts deserve scholarly attention.