Different Realizations Of The Same Intentio

“Androgyny”, a concept put forward by Virginia Woolf in1929, provides literarycriticism with a new perspective. Woolf herself puts this idea into her own literarycreations among which Orlando and To the Lighthouse are the most representative.The concept has received a close attention not only from literary circles but alsoin the translation fields since its appearance. In translation studies, many researcheshave been done from this perspective. However, most researches just regarded it as away for feminists to get out of the difficulty, or described it as a new relationshipbetween the translator and the author, the translation and the original. Yet few of themdiscussed how “androgyny” is realized in translation by combining “androgyny” withconcrete examples.This thesis first makes an analysis of Woolf’s To the Lighthouse in term of itsdescription of the characters’ dialogue, action, appearance and mien, and psychology.Then it makes a contrast between Ma Ainong’s and Qu Shijing’s translations in orderto find how they realize androgyny in translations respectively. The author finds thatthe two translators adopt distinctively different ways to realize Woolf’s androgynousmind although they have basically the same intention in translation and deeplyrecognize the androgyny in the original. They are different from each other, forexample, in the degree of sensitivity on words with origins, imitating way, andtranslation strategy. The reasons why they realize androgyny in different ways mainlylie in the fact that they have different social genders, professions and knowledge aboutWoolf.As is well-known, feminism translation theorists aim to eliminate male hegemonythrough supplementing, hijacking, and prefacing in translation, and construct a neworder in a binary opposition between male and female. However, this study, based on acontrast between the translations of the two translators with the same feminist ideas,finds that they actually have almost the same translation intention. Their differences insocial gender, profession and knowledge about the original lead to their different waysof realizing androgyny. This finding is of significance in recognize the true purpose offeminist translation theory, especially their notion about the relationship between thetranslator and the author, and the original and the translation. Moreover, it is of somevalue in correctly understanding and processing gender awareness while translatingworks with feminist thoughts.