Pearl S.Buck--a Practitioner From Feminism To Feminist Translation

Pearl S. Buck is the first woman who won the Nobel Prize in Literature for her devotion to the communication between China and the world outside. Being a female writer, she expresses her great concern to women's life. She is the first to translate the Chinese classic—Shui Hu Zhuan into English with the expectation to give a real description about China, which was incredibly popular in American society. In her time, women were silent about their inferior social status. With the wakening-up of the women's movements in the west, more and more women writers began to concentrate on a historic project—letting women be heard, speaking for women, and protesting for women. As the result of feminism in certain period, women realized they should not be silent and invisible as they reinterpret the source text into another language. Pearl S. Buck is no exception, besides her novels, her translation also demonstrates her feminist views. In order to systematically analyze her feminist views and the strategies she adopts to express her feminist views in her translation, the method of case study, comparison and analysis are applied. Among which the comparison between her version and Shapiro's is the basis of her feminist translation analysis. We can definitely find her feminist thoughts in her literary works, such as her sympathy to women's living and fate; her pursuit to women's liberation and freedom; Due to the bilingual culture's influence, on one hand, she believes that women should be radical and be aware of their own right as the western feminists do, on the other hand, women should hold their virtues unchanged like the Chinese women do. Pearl S. Buck's translation is greatly affected by her feminist viewpoints in All Men Are Brothers by using particular strategies such as the use of gender-neutral language; the discreet choice of words ect.. So we can conclude that she is truly a practitioner from feminism to feminist translation.