A Comparative Study Of Two Chinese Versions Of Pride And Prejudice

With the"Cultural Turn"in translation studies, people gradually pay more attention to the relationship between translation and other social-cultural aspects. As the feminist movement has been developing in the West, women try to cast off their subordinate position of discrimination and oppression for a long period of time. They ask for the equal rights as men in political, cultural and social life. Soon this movement affects the fields of literature and translation and then gives birth to the feminist translation. Feminist translation theory aims to challenge the absolute authority of men and the original in the social and literary ladder and promote both women and translation. Feminist translators think that language can intervene actively the creation of meaning: translators are not only readers communicating with two languages, but also"rewriting"the text to intervene the culture. They make full play of feminist consciousness and foreground female identities in their translating using various translation strategies.Pride and Prejudice, produced by the famous female novelist Jane Austen, is a novel full of feminine consciousness. From the perspective of feminist translation studies, the present author tries to make a systematic and detailed comparison of the two Chinese versions of this novel, which are translated by Zhang Ling, Zhang Yang and Sun Zhili respectively. The thesis discloses the features of different translators on translation strategies and practice, especially the feminine consciousness of female translator.The research consists of five parts. Chapter One is the introduction that describes the background, significance and arrangement of the thesis. Literature review constitutes Chapter Two, in which studies on feminist translation theories and practice abroad and home are expounded. Chapter Three concretely analyzes some topics of feminist translation studies, especially language and translation strategies adopted by feminist translators, which provides a theoretical basis for the following comparison. Chapter Four carries out a detailed comparative study of the two Chinese versions of Pride and Prejudice from two aspects, namely, translation strategies and language expression. By comparison, the present author indicates the feminine consciousness in Zhang's version in the light of feminist translation studies. Chapter Five makes a conclusion pointing out that the female translator Zhang Ling's feminist consciousness is stronger than the male translator Sun Zhili's, for she consciously adopts the feminist translating strategies to show her feminist consciousness and does her best to discover and disclose the feminist traces in the original. This chapter also puts forward limitations of the thesis.Through the above analysis, the present author holds that introduction of feminist translation into English-Chinese translation practice is necessary and feasible, especially in guiding feminist literature translation.