A Study On Translation From Perspective Of Feminism

The 1980s witnessed much academic interest in cultural studies and cultural criticism, and such interest designated translation research towards the cultural turn. As Nida asserts, "For truly successful translating, biculturalism is even more important than bilingualism, since words have meanings in terms of the cultures in which they function." The emergence of cultural turn highlights concrete issues of cultural and contextual specifications in translation realm while eschewing abstractions of "translatability" and "dynamic equivalence" and such traditional notion which views translation as a primarily linguistic transference. Moreover, as Sherry Simon points out, "Cultural studies bring to translation an understanding of the complexities of gender and culture", and it is no exaggeration that when gender is brought into play in translation studies, the intersection of feminist work on gender and translation has produced far-reaching and transformative significance in the academia.Feminist translation theory, represented by Barbara Godard, Sherry Simon, Susanne de Lotbinière -Harwood and Luise von Flotow, blossomed in Canada and North America and developed towards maturity and systemization. They focused on the patriarchal language which, according to their understanding, excluded, insulted and harmed women; they experimented on feminist writing with new words, new spellings and new metaphors in an endeavor to subvert women's oppression and subjugation; they unearthed a substantial body of works created by many important women writers who were lost in patriarchal culture and revised plenty of translated texts that were tainted with misogynic prejudice; they openly intervened with source texts from a feminist perspective by way of diverse strategies in order to demonstrate translators' subjectivity and creativity; they emphasized that translation was not reproduction but production, thus offering us a deep understanding of the nature of translation. In one word, feminist theory when introduced to translation realm, has led to abundant and brand-new fruits. To be specific, feminism has exerted impressive influence upon translation theory, translation practice and translation criticism which are what this paper is going to elaborate on.The modern feminist thought was first brought into China by Professor Zhu Hong in the 1980s. Since then, domestic researchers began to attach due importance to feminist translation, and accordingly, an increasing number of academic papers and works in this aspect appeared. However, compared to western countries in terms of translation studies from a feminist perspective, China still lagged far behind, which can be seen from its hysteretic start-up and primarily introduction of and commentary on exotic fruits. Domestic scholars contribute less in the development and enrichment of feminist translation theory in a Chinese context, which may be traced back to different cultural and historical backgrounds. Therefore, the authoress of this paper herein focuses on presenting a systematic introduction of feminist translation studies in such three specific aspects as translation theory, translation practice and translation criticism in the hope that researchers will pay more attention to this newly-rising yet promising academic undertaking.In a feminist era, feminism pervasively penetrates into translation field as well. The authoress, apart from providing a detailed presentation of feminist translation, touches upon the explanation of feminism-related terms and historical interfaces between feminism and translation, its development status quo in both China and western countries and an impartial evaluation on this research. More significantly, proper case study together with abundant examples and quotations is available as demonstration and argument ground. Therefore, it is safe to say that the authoress strives to achieve well-organization, rationality and enrichment of the contents.To sum up, gender plays a key role in constructing meaning in any textual practice which makes possible a differentiated and deeper understanding of translation process. However, gender is not the only element in the cultural contexts that functions and that translators, theorists and researchers should acknowledge and concentrate on; doubtlessly, there are numerous others too. Gender study, by its presence alone, is conducive to offering a brand-new research vision in the translation realm, thus deserving ponderous attention from the academic world.