A Tentative Study On Women Translators' Rewriting From The Perspective Of Feminism

With the development of third wave of western feminism there emerge a group of feminist critics and researchers on feminist translation, e.g. Sussane de Lotbiniere-Harwood, Barbara Godard, Lori Chamberlain, Luise von Flotow and Sherry Simon. They approach translation from a gender-studies angle. Many of their articles and papers contribute to reveal male-orientations and gender prejudices embedded in works and translations. Moreover they explore three basic issues in translation: fidelity, equivalence and the invisibility of translators, get beyond dichotomies of source/ target, primary/ second, writing/ rewriting that characterize traditional translation theory.Feminist translators exploit strategies such as appropriation, footnoting and prefacing, supplementing to convert the subordinate status of both women and translation to the affirmative. Translation is viewed as production to subdue masculine figures and male elements as well as reinstate female figures and feminine realities. Textual meaning is a feature of a specific time, constructed for a specific purpose, by a specific individual within a specific context (Flotow,1997:96). Therefore women-identified translators tend to assume personal responsibility for the rewritings as producers of the translated text instead of hiding behind the translation as followers or reproducers of the original text.My paper traces the gendered metaphors of translation in the west and the east from the perspective of cultural studies mainly in three aspects, that is, the author and the translator;the source text and the target text;the translation process. Then I'll review the feminist translation strategies chiefly in aspects:supplementing, footnoting and prefacing, hijacking. Then I'll focus on the analysis of the following aspects: cultural appropriation, feminist interventionist rereading and rewriting. My paper makes a comparison of two Chinese versions of an American feminist work produced by a male and a female translator in terms of choice of words, translation strategies, ideological background of both gendered translators. My paper concludes that a woman translator's status is positioned and constructed through rewriting.