A Tentative Study On The Translator’s Identity In Feminist Translation-Zhu Hong’s Translation As The Case

Looking back to the history both in abroad and at home, no matter inphysiology or in labor division in the society, the female used to begreatly inferior to the male. The female are taken as appendants of themale, and their way to freedom is foiled by the authority of theman-dominating thinking. Accordingly, the status of female translatorsgets little attention as well. Because of the subordinate role in translatingactivity the female is also considered as the similar inferior gender. At thebeginning of 1970s, with the developing and spreading of feminismactivity, in the feminists’opinion, gaining speaking freedom should betaken as the first step to unbind the female, in which Canadian feminismtranslators such as Barbara Godard, Sherry Simon, Louis Von Flotowhave acquired outstanding achievements. Ever since 1980s, feminismbegan to get involved into translation theory and has hewed out a new erain this field. The feminists are eager to smash the shackles forged by thetraditional culture and finally be heard and seen in the translation workswhich is regarded as one of their purposes to fight for their rights,especially for the speaking one. In its essence, feminism translation is an approach that advocates theinterventionism in the process of translating. For the sake of highlightingthe feminism thinking in the translation works, the translators take threefeminism translating policies brought forward by Flotow as their mainapproaches, namely supplementing, hijacking , prefacing and footnoting,which are regarded as the best way to express the theory advocated by thefeminists as well as many other translators. By constructing their owngender identity and ideology through translating, the feminist translatorstry to voice themselves with language to upset the male authority and tostress the subjectivity of the female.This thesis is based on the feminist translation perspective, exploringand analyzing feminist consciousness of Chinese female translators,especially that of Zhu Hong. With the introduction and development offeminist translation theory in China, many translation studies aboutfemale translators or works of female writers have appeared at present, inwhich Zhu Hong is high-profiled because of her leading studies in thefeminine literature and translation. She clarified her feminist translationpoint in Professor Mu Lei’s interview. Her standard of choosing thesource works is : the author is female and the work is about women issues.Before she gets into translating, she will read the source works repeatedly,then she translates them from the perspective of feminism. She says, " Ithink when I translate woman’s works, I can get deeper involved in it, but there is some distance when I translate man’s works." Zhu Hong hastranslated many Chinese women authors’ works in line with such atranslation standard.Through the studies and analysis of Zhu Hong’s translated works "AFrolic in the Snow" in the thesis, it comes to the conclusion that feministtranslators not only can be feminist readers, but also can be feministrewriters and cultural manipulators. And the thesis analyzes manyexamples of Zhu Hong’s translated works under the feminist translationstrategies and finds out that Zhu Hong transmits the problems andenvironments the Chinese women faced with to the readers effectively byadding her own opinions to make the translated work more vivid,concrete and active on the basis of grasping the basic tone of the sourcework successfully. In contrast, the strategies Chinese translators adopt aremuch milder than western feminist translators’. Zhu Hong’s practicemakes a big influence on our translation study and practice. The feministconsciousness also influences our translation practice deeply, which letspeople know that translation is not just a process from one language toanother one, but related with many factors such as the politics, culture,ethics and so on. Gender consciousness plays an important role intranslation. Therefore, feminist translators can start from the identity,social status and such factors when they translate female works or works about female to explore the translation strategies and to highlight thefeminist identity.