Female Utterance In Yang Yi's Translation Of Wuthering Heights

Language is a kind of social activity. Therefore, there must be some discrepancies when it is used in different language communities. In the late 19th century, feminist movements began in the West and spread quickly all over the world. However, limited by the male-centered social system, feminist activities were largely restricted in many aspects, such as politics and economy. Fortunately, feminists found a light in literature through different kinds of translation practices and earned lots of rights for women. Unconsciously, translation began to be linked with feminism. As a result, a new translation theory is formed—feminist translation theory, which brings some fresh air into traditional translation field. This theory has a great influence on almost every country in the world, including China.Compared with western feminism, Chinese feminism started later and had less influence; so did Chinese feminist translation theory. However, women translators emerged in large numbers with their feminist translations, which promoted the development of both feminism and feminist translation theory in China.Guided by feminist translation theory, feminists establish their own way of speaking and writing gradually. Female utterance, being in sharp contrast with male utterance, finally comes into being.The author of this thesis analyses female utterance in Yang Yi's translation of Wuthering Heights from the perspective of feminist translation theory.There're four main chapters in this thesis. The first chapter concentrates on feminist translation theory. Feminism can't be left aside when feminist translation theory is referred to. It is known that feminism originates from the West and spreads into China, so both western feminism and Chinese feminism need to be reviewed here, including their respective developments and interactions with each other. Then, the thesis goes on with feminist translation theory, including its viewpoints, strategies and significances.Along with feminist translation theory, female utterance becomes a heated topic. A brief account of its formation, development and comparison with male utterance is given in the second chapter. In the study of female utterance, gender discrimination should be taken seriously. On one hand, the author lists many examples to demostrate how languages are forced to have gender discrimination. On the other, features of female utterance are discussed in aspects like pronunciation, vocabulary and so on.From the perspective of feminist translation theory, a case study of female utterance in Wuthering Heights is conducted. Therefore, a brief introduction to Yang Yi, Emily Bronte and the English and Chinese versions of Wuthering Heights is made in the third chapter. Both the translator Yang Yi and the author Emily Bronte are women who have witnessed the development of feminism, so it is more convincing to choose this novel as a research object.The fourth chapter is the main body of this thesis. Many examples are presented to illustrate how feminist translation theory affects female utterance in the translation of Wuthering Heights. Examples here refer to text choices, vocabularies, strategy applications, as well as character descriptions.Wuthering Heights is a classic and translated by several Chinese translators. This thesis concentrates on female utterance in this novel, especially in its Chinese translated version under the influence of feminist translation theory. However, such voices that there's no feminist elements in Yang's translation have been heard for a long time. The author doesn't agree on this point of view. Indeed, Yang Yi's translation is restricted by her time and social system, but there're still many vivid manifestations of female utterance in her translation which will be demostrated in detail in this thesis.This thesis is based on the author's learning of feminist translation theory, her understanding of the original and translated novels, as well as lots of case studies of female utterance. Research into feminism, feminist translation theory and female utterance remains a heated topic. The author would like to welcome discussions on this thesis and continue devoting much of her attention to this topic.