A Feminist Approach To Yang Bi's Chinese Version Of Vanity Fair

Under the tremendous influence of Western Feminist Movement, Feminist approach has penetrated into various fields including translation and brought with it a new perspective to translation studies. Since then, the role of the translator becomes important, for the reason that feminist translation has subverted the rooted ideology which claims the translator and translation are inferior to the writer and the original, just as woman is inferior to man. At the same time, feminist translation scholars advocate adopting techniques like"supplementing","prefacing or footnoting"and"hijacking"etc, to make woman seen in translation, speak for the woman, and womanhandle to challenge the patriarchal connotations imposed on them. Gender identity is their key focus, just as Flotow's address in 1949 that one is not born, but rather becomes a woman. It subverts the dominated patriarchy, especially Freud's biological determinism on gender. Thus, feminist study sweeps every corner of the whole academic world and broadens the spectrum of academic investigation.In 2004, Chinese scholars began to pay enough attention to this approach. And it gives us a fertile researching ground. This thesis has reviewed western, especially feminist translation studies in Canada as well as the summary of recent research work done at home. The research focuses on the feminist manipulation of Yang Bi's translation of Vanity Fair by a comparative study with the Jias'version in the light of sociolinguistic study on text at the microscopic level, and a macroscopic study on the whole social, cultural, familial background and personality factors to explore feminist ideology and tactics during her translation. From the comparative study, we find out that Yang Bi takes efforts to reveal woman identity, speak for the woman, and woman-handle the language to challenge the patriarchy with the tool of language: words and sentences on different levels. From the background, we find out her typical feminist ideology of freedom and equality.The thesis claims that Yang Bi's feminist manipulation is obvious, but it is still implemented subconsciously. Her fluent and flexible translation becomes the model for all the later translators. Naturally, the flexible translation techniques that are proposed by feminist translation scholars not only contribute to achieving the subjectivity of translators, but also rescuing translators from the dilemma, and what's more, it has greatly promoted the status of a translator.