Translation Study In The Perspective Of Feminism

Feminist translation theory that originated in Canada in 1980s is the fresh blood with new ideas in the field of translation. In the eighth decade of the last century translation study experienced its second turn in history, the Culture Turn. This turn brought people out of the limitation of bilingual transmission and started to concern about the political, social and historical culture essence in translation activities. With the flourishing development of feminism in the western countries, feminism took the gender issue as the breakthrough point and put its antenna into the field of language and culture, thus impelling the birth of feminist translation theory.In the new angle of feminism, feminist translation theory re-interprets translation and emphasizes translator's subjectivity. This theory rebels the binary relationship in the traditional translation theory, redefines the relationship between the original and the translation, the original writer and the translator, and revises fidelity. Feminist translators claim that translation is production, not reproduction. In practice feminist translators emphasize the creative treason to the original in the perspective of feminism and have put forward their own translation strategies, such as supplement, preface & footnoting and hijacking. Feminism has provided a new angle for people to re-think the deficiency in the traditional translation theory and has enlarged the field of translation.Feminism was introduced to China in 1980s. But it was not until 2000 that some scholars started to pay attention to the influence of feminism on translation. On the one hand, China has never experienced the real independent women's liberation movement like the western countries. Women's liberation in China is the by-product of social revolution, just a symbol of fighting against feudal ideology. On the other hand, faithfulness has deeply rooted in Chinese translation field. Chinese female translators have never rebelled to this tradition actively as western feminist translators. Faithfulness is still the uttermost principle for them to follow. Their resistance to the patriarchy in the original is quite mild.This thesis makes a systematic discussion on feminist translation study with focus on the feminist translators'rebellion to the traditional translation theory and their creative treason in practice. With the case study of Chinese female's translation, the author also summarizes the difference of Chinese female translation from western feminists'translation. At the end of this thesis, the author presents the limitations and deficiencies of feminist translation theory and gives an expectation of this research.