On Literary Translation From The Perspective Of Feminism-A Comparative Study Of Two Chinese Versions Of Emma

Feminist translation theory is the combination of the feminist movement and the "cultural turn" of translation in the early1980s. The objective of feminist translation theory is to challenge the absolute authority of the man and the original in the social and literary ladder and promote the social situation of both woman and translation. Due to the tremendous influence of destructuralism, post-colonialism, cultural studies and other modern theories during their evolvement, feminist translators are beginning to think of taking translation practice as a political activity, attempting to eliminate discrimination against women in the course of translation, and put more emphasis on the translating subject from the perspective of women. Feminist translation theory questioned "faithfulness","equivalence" and the invisibility of translators in the traditional translation theory. They encourage the translator’s subjectivity and creativity, advocating that the translation and the original, translators and original authors should enjoy equal status.Although feminist translation theory has been introduced to China early in the1980s, it did not immediately receive enough attention from the circle of Chinese translation. Instead, it has long been treated as a marginal, non-mainstream idea. Given a lack of feminist political movements as in the western world, the true sense of feminist ideology has not yet gained popularity in China. However, in recent years, with the great expansion of feminist translation’s influence across the world, more and more Chinese translators and translation theorists have started to be concerned and engaged in the exploration of this theory. Therefore, an objective and comprehensive study on the influence of feminist translation theory in the practice of literary translation in China is overwhelmingly significant.Emma, Jane Austen’s great works, is considered as the most mature novel among her six masterpieces. The author takes two Chinese versions of Emma as the research objects:one was translated by Mr. Sun Zhili (Yilin Press) and the other was co-translated by Ms. Zhu Qingying and Mr. Zhu Wenguang (Shanghai Translation Publishing House), trying to make a detailed and systematic comparison between the two from the perspective of the feminism, and intending to explore whether these two Chinese versions are affected by the feminist translation theory; if so, to what extent are these two influenced by it? This dissertation mainly analyses at the levels of language and feminist consciousness. The linguistic level includes lexical and syntactic levels. From the research, it can be seen that the feminist translators prefer to use sentence final particles, tag questions or interrogative questions and dashes to make female images more conspicuous. From the level of feminist ideology, it can be seen that the feminist translators are much better in detecting and conveying the tender feelings in the heroine’s inner world.This paper finds out that feminist translation theory has already been accepted by the majority of translators in China and has been widely used in their translation practice. From the two selected versions, the author discovers that Mr. Sun’s version and Ms. Zhu’s are both influenced by that theory. To a certain degree, the feminist awareness is better represented in Ms. Zhu’s translation. The author believes that feminist translation theory has challenged our traditional translation theory, which has provided us with a new perspective in translation studies. But there are also some shortcomings and limitations which need more study.