Zhang Ling's Translations As Viewed From The Perspective Of Feminism: A Study On The Interventionism

Western feminist translation theory is a product of the alliance between feminism and translation studies. As a branch of it, interventionist feminist translation emphasizes how feminist translators use language as a manipulative tool to intervene actively into the creation of meaning in the target culture. Feminist translation, in practice, tries its utmost to advocate a kind of interventionist translation, asking for a feminist creation on the translated text. Feminist translators who are already politicized by feminism may take offence at texts that are unpalatable or politically unacceptable and they 'correct' texts in the name of feminist 'truths' to query their source texts from a feminist perspective, to intervene and make changes when the texts depart from this perspective (Flotow, 1997:24). Specific strategies and methods are employed as the actual means of intervention so as to win the lawsuit of feminist translators and to make their identities visible, such as selecting of source texts, and the three practices of western feminist translation summarized by Luise von Flotow, i. e. supplementing, prefacing and footnoting, and "hijacking", the affirmation of translators' signature and other strategies (Flotow, 1991:69-70).There is no denial that the ideology of every translator executes its impact on the practice of translation more or less. Likewise, the Chinese female translators influenced by the western feminist translation theory will inevitably reflect their particular thoughts in translating. However, the interventionist strategies applied by Chinese female translators are not so radical and strong as those by the western feminist translators, due to the different social ideology and culture.