The Interpretation Of Western Feminist Translation In Chinese Cultural Context

The combination of translation studies with feminism is based on the similarly inferior position of women in society and translators in translation. It is western feminist translators who began to put translation studies within the framework of feminism. Taking translation as a political activity, they exert no effort to fight for the equal position between women and men in society, between translators and the original writers in translation. They have established a set of orderly and regular feminist translation theories to challenge the traditional translation theories. Stressing that translation is"rewriting"of the original text, they promote"feminist creative treason"and foreground translators'subjectivity in translation. In the process of rewriting the original, they can freely change those concepts which do not match their feminist thoughts. To achieve the translators'dominant role in the process of translation, they put forward their feminist translation strategies, even some radical ones, such as supplementing, hijacking, prefacing and footnoting.However, western feminist translation theories have suffered cold receptions from Chinese women since its first introduction into China in 1980s. It was not until the earliest this century that it became a new perspective for translation studies in China and aroused increasing interests among translation professionals or scholars. Nonetheless, due to the unique cultural, traditional and historical backgrounds of China and Chinese women's specific personality, it developed in a different way in China from the west, though there is something in common between the two different peoples. First, the research is confined to the academic field without involving in any political elements; Second, male researchers are twice the female ones. Third, most of these researchers just make literature reviews on western feminist translation theories and practice and introduce them into China, but do not study it in Chinese background and give a nationalized interpretation on it. Fourth, some radical western feminist translation strategies are not popular with Chinese female translators; on the contrary, those female translators with gender awareness adopt a more moderate and much milder attitude towards the traditionally male-discriminated language in translation.Under such circumstances, this thesis is intending to make an exploration of the reasons why these differences occur and to predict how far this theory can go in China.After a sketchy review of the background information, the combination of...