Feminist Consciousness Represented

Feminist translation theory alerts us to a frustrating relation between translation and gender:just as women were considered inferior to men in particular society, translators and their works were deemed subordinated to original writers and texts. By pointing to the disturbing fact that translation and women were respectively condescended to the bottom of literature and society, feminists challenged the male-centered discourse about translation and raised consciousness about the low status as both women and translators had been positioned for centuries. Theorists suggested various translating strategies, such as feminist intervention in the creative process and emphasis on feminist elements in the text in translation practice.Drawing on feminist translation theory, this thesis studies how translators, with or without a feminist conviction, participate in reproducing feminist consciousness as in the original text. As such translators may take translation as a medium through which they present a feminist perspective. This study compares the ways, in which feminist consciousness is represented in three Chinese versions of Jane Eyre respectively by a female translator and feminist Zhu Qingying, and two male translators Wu Junxie and Huang Yuanshen.The purpose of this comparison is to examine how translators treat the feminist components in Jane Eyre, such as Jane’s rising consciousness of equality in marriage relation, free will in pursuit of knowledge and individual freedom. This study finds out that although the translators adopt different strategies, they are successful so long as they reproduce some feminist sense of Bronte’s text and that they bring a feminist writer to Chinese readers.