The Analysis Of Feminist Translation From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

The interplay between feminism and translation studies over the seventies of last century ultimately exerted forceful influences upon the conventionally-held concepts of translation studies, necessarily yielding fruitful researches. With the pragmatic turn both in linguistics as well as in communicative theory, Vermeer and other German functionalism scholars started to view translation as a purposeful intercultural communicative activity between individuals instead of something that is done to a text by a translator, so they proposed a new theory--- Skopos Theory which holds that translation is a form of translational action based on a source text and the prime principle determining any translation process is the purpose (Skopos) of the overall translational action. The birth of Skopos Theory thus provides a new and effective perspective for translation study, based on which the once prevailing translation criterion for a good translation has been questioned. Therefore, this thesis tentatively applies Skopos Theory to feminist translation to expound the speciality and rationality of feminist translation and proposes to evaluate feminist translation with rules of Skopos Theory.First of all, this thesis believes that Skopos Theory can give a reasonable analysis of translators'role as an active and creative subject in translating process and redefines the concept of loyalty as an important translation principle.Secondly, the thesis has elaborated on the relation between Skopos Theory and feminist translation. The author argues that, Skopos Theory actually has provided theoretic explanation to feminist translation, which can be summarized as: (1) the purpose of translation has been emphasized; (2) the principle of fidelity has been reinterpreted; (3) the feminist translation process has been theoretically analyzed. Based on the theoretical analysis of Skopos Theory and feminist translation, the author then makes a comparative study on the two different translated versions of two famous poems chosen from New Songs from a Jade Terrace, which is said to be the first anthology choosing women as protagonists in the history of Chinese literature and the first feminist literature works in Chinese history. Through such comparison, the thesis aims to indicate the differences existing in the understandings and linguistic expressions between two translated versions. Anne Birrell, as a female translator, subconsciously, is more sensitive to the feminine features in the source text and she even makes some changes to the original text according to her feminist thoughts. While Professor Ding Zuxin, as a male translator, is stricter with the original text which objectively represents the patriarchy system of ancient China. Based on the above analysis, the thesis finally arrives at the conclusion that though these two versions differ a lot in many aspects, both of them have served and fulfilled their translation purposes, so both of them can be regarded as excellent translation works.Lastly, the thesis, after affirming the positive aspects of feminist translation theory, also has pointed out some limitations of this theory and the research in this field. The author suggests that more cross-theory and cross-discipline studies should be considered in future and thinks that feminist translation still awaits further development in China.