The Impact Of Translator’s Gender Consciousness

Feminist translation theory, which emerged in the "cultural turn" of translation studies in the1980s, is the product of the combination between feminism and translation. Western feminist translators approach translation studies from the gender perspective, revealing the gender discrimination towards women in translation process. They advocate that translation is a political act used to make language speak for women in order to strive for a due position for women both in language and society. They emphasize the equal status between the original and the translation as well as the author and the translator, redefine the notion of fidelity, and highlight the translator’s subjectivity by adopting translation strategies such as supplementing, prefacing and footnoting, and hijacking. Since its advent, a lot of feminist translators and theorists such as Susanne de Lotbiniere-Harwood, Sherry Simon, Lori Chamberlain and Luise von Flotow have made great contributions to the development of feminist translation studies.Introduced into China in the1980s, western feminism has exerted significant impact on the foreign literature criticism. However, it is not until2002that feminist translation theory became the focus in domestic translation academia with many relevant articles have appeared in authoritative journals and magazines, among which most research is confined to the theoretical introduction and review while investigations into the application of the theory in E-C translation practice is still in its infancy.The Color Purple, one of the western feminist literary classics, is the African-American writer Alice Walker’s masterpiece. This thesis selects two Chinese versions of The Color Purple, respectively produced by a female translator Tao Jie and a male translator Yang Renjing, as the research subject. Through a comparative study of the two versions under the guidance of feminist translation theory, the paper aims to explore the impact of gender consciousness on their translation process, sum up the differences between Chinese female translators and their western counterparts and analyze the factors contributing to such distinctions from social, historical and cultural backgrounds.This thesis consists of six chapters. The first chapter is an introduction of research background, the objective and significance. The second chapter reviews the studies on feminist translation both at home and abroad. The third part concerns the theoretical framework, including the development of feminism and its integration with translation studies, emphasizing the specific feminist translation ideology and strategies. The fourth chapter gives a brief introduction to Alice Walker and The Color Purple, as well as its two Chinese translators Tao Jie and Yang Renjing. The fifth chapter conducts a detailed comparison of the two versions ranging from motivations behind the text choice, the translator’s preface to the main body. Finally, the conclusion is drawn in the last chapter. Compared with the male translator Yang Renjing, the female translator Taojie has a better interpretation of the characteristics in the original, and manifests stronger gender awareness, especially in the aspects of aesthetic orientation towards women and female physiological experiences. Besides, Chinese female translators possess certain features different from their western counterparts, that is, they have different translation purposes and moderate translation ideology. As to the reasons, the absence of independent feminist movements as well as the deep-rooted influence of traditional translation criterion on the Chinese female translators will be discussed.