Eileen Chang’s Translation Thoughts From The Perspective Of Feminism

Feminism is one of the most active and influential trends of thoughts in the20thcentury. After the “cultural turn” in1980s, it has been popular to study translationfrom the perspective of feminism. Western feminist translation theory with SherrySimon and Luise Von Flotow as its representatives is the product of the alliance offeminism and translation. Feminist translation aims to rebuild a tradition and rule forfeminism translation and make translation not only a matter of linguistic techniquesbut also an issue of culture, ideology, etc. Supplementing, prefacing and footnoting,and hijacking are main feminist translation strategies developed by Flotow.As one of the most eminent female writers in the history of Chinese literature,Eileen Chang is a master in depicting human nature, especially the inner world ofwomen. Most of her works are women-oriented and care the destiny of women; thusare characterized by feminism. While her identity as a novelist, essayist and dramatistis well-known, her identity as a translator is often ignored. Although Chang had beencarrying out translation practice, her remarks about translation remain limited, makingstudy on her translation thoughts not easy. The thesis tries to study Eileen Chang’stranslation thoughts embodied in her translation from the perspective of feminism bytaking The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai as a main example and analyzing interventionstrategies she takes in translating it as well as her unique diversified strategies intackling details.Thus the thesis tries to be innovative in the following aspects: First, the thesis triesto explore Chang’s translation thoughts from the perspective of feminism; second, thethesis tries to find out Chang’s uniqueness by comparing her original translation toHung’s revision which was ignored by past studies; finally, in the conclusion part, theauthor pointed out that comparing to western feminist translation thoughts, Chang’stend to be more gentle and neutral, reflecting her ideas of women’s living state that“don’t fight is fighting”, which may unintentionally give enlightenments to thedevelopment of feminism in modern times.