Female Consciousness Of Female Translators

With the broadening impact of the cultural turn on translation researches from the late twentieth century, translation from the perspective of culture urged Translation Studies to become an independent scientific discipline from Literature Studies and Linguistics. From then on, translation itself is no longer considered as a simple transformation from one language to another, but an act of rewriting and reproduction. Translation from a feminist perspective provides a number of new translation standards as well as advocation of the subjectivity of translators. It can be summarized in such aspects as gender in translation studies, the fidelity and the ethics in feminist translation, the subjectivity of feminist translators and the translation as rewriting. With clear feminist consciousness, female translators firmly believe, in the first place, that sexual discrimination in translation studies should be eliminated. They also consider that translation the translator/translation is equal with the author/original. And they try to make their translation a rewriting under the feminist perspective.This thesis is based on the feminist translation perspective, especially digging into Chinese female translators with feminist consciousness. Chinese female translators accept the western feminist translation perspective while keeping the traditional Chinese translation standards. As a result, their translation displays a double influence from both standards. Chinese female translators'female consciousness is reflected on their bold rewriting of the original, and deletion of the description of sexual intercourse and the female body. The subject of this case study is Tao Jie's translation of Alice Walker's novel The Color Purple. From the perspective of feminist translation, the thesis adopts a descriptive research on Tao Jie's translation of The Color Purple, focusing on the various translation strategies she chose under the obvious influence of her feminist consciousness.The thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter serves as an introduction to the theoretical background of the research, i.e. Translation on Feminist Perspective; it overviews the main characteristics of feminist translation, and it also makes an introduction to female translator Tao Jie and Alice Walker's The Color Purple that will be analysed in the thesis. The second, the third and the fourth chapters are the main body of the thesis, with a similar structure. The second chapter discusses feminist consciousness in Tao's translation strategies of euphemisms at the level of traditional euphemisms and stylistic euphemisms in The Color Purple. The third chapter discusses feminist consciousness of Tao's translation strategies at the level of description of characters, exploring how Tao deals with portraits, behaviors, and inner remarks in The Color Purple. The fourth chapter discusses feminist consciousness of Tao's translation strategies at the ideology level, surveying how Tao copes with Walker's "womanism". These three chapters analyse Tao's translation strategies at three different levels. The fifth chapter presents the conclusion of the thesis which includes research findings as well as limitations.