Feminist Translation Theory And Translation Of Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre, as one of Charlotte Bronte’s best literary productions, is regarded asa classic among the feminist literary works. Its long-lasting charm lies in unique andvivid female images, enriched feminine language, and the heroine’s untiring strugglefor freedom and equality. And reconstructing these female images, enriched femininelanguage, and theme of the novel plays an essential role in the translation of JaneEyre. For two translators with different gender, their different understandings of thefeminine characteristics of the original text often result in the differences betweenthe translated versions. This is a question often confronted by translators in literature,but it needs to be analyzed further.Feminist translation theory approaches translation from the perspective offeminism with the core of identifying and critiquing concepts which relegate bothwomen and translation to the bottom of the social and literary ladder. Its purpose isto lay stress on the female translator’s subjectivity to make female translators’ roleseen and female images and voices lost in the patriarchal society seen and heard.Luise Von Flotow, as one of the representatives of feminist translation theory,proposes3strategies which include supplementing, prefacing and footnoting, andhijacking to make women’s images and voices that are lost in the patriarchaltranslation seen and heard. It can be seen that translating a classical feminist literarywork well is closely linked to the exertion of a female translator and representationof female images in feminist literary works. On the basis of feminist translationtheory, the comparative study on the two Chinese versions of Jane Eyre will beconducted in the thesis.The present study aims to examine and compare two Chinese translations ofJane Eyre under the guidance of Flotow’s theory in her book Translation andGender. Besides, when discussing the translation of sentences given by thetranslators of different gender, both Flotow’s theory in her book Translation andGender and Lakoff’s discussion about characteristics of sentence use in “women’slanguage” will be adopted. The two Chinese versions selected in the study are thefemale translator Zhu Qingying’s version and the male translator Huang Yuanshen’sversion. By comparative analysis of text translation, word translation, sentencetranslations and paragraph translation in the two versions, the study tries toinvestigate how different translators with different gender exert their influence ontranslations of Jane Eyre, and whether there are differences in representing feminine features in language use, and female image and identity of the original between thetwo versions.Based on the above analysis, the paper finally arrives at the conclusion thatthere do exist differences between Zhu’s version and Huang’s version. In general, theunique female images, enriched feminine language, and the Jane’s untiring strugglefor freedom and equality are represented more vividly and clearly in Zhu’stranslation than that in Huang’s translation. However, Huang Yuanshen, a maletranslator, sometimes brings his gender consciousness in translation, which fails torepresent female image, feminine language, and Jane’s inner activities of the original.To be specific, the female translator’s preference for words expressions, sentencesconstructions, and tones of the passage can help reveal female identity and femininelanguage in the translated text. Though Huang tries his best to make women’sidentity recognized, women’s voice heard, and women’s status improved, in manycases, he still fails. Therefore, translators’ different ways of tackling gender issue inlanguage use in the novel are related to the gender of the translator, which provesthat feminist translation theory is quite helpful in guiding the present study.