On Female Translator’s Subjectivity From The Perspective Of Feminist Translation Theory

Since translation studies took cultural turn in1980s, many cultural elements involved in the translationprocess began to draw translation scholars’ attention, including translator’s living background, political beliefand so on. Gender of the translator has never been taken as an exception. The integration of gender issues intotranslation studies is more inevitable than incidental since gender cannot be excluded from the discussionabout translators. This integration has led to the emergence of feminist translation theory. Translator’ssubjectivity manifested in the process of translation has always been a heatedly discussed topic in translationstudies. Feminist translation theory has broadened the realm of translation studies and provided a brand newangle for translation studies, especially the study of translator’s subjectivity. It is not until the1990s thatfeminist translation theory found its way into China, and now it has become a new area of translation researchin China.Taking the study on translator’s subjectivity as its main topic and feminist translation theory as the majortheoretic framework, this thesis tries to restudy translator’s especially female translator’s subjectivity from thefeminist translation theory both theoretically and practically, so as to find out how the female translatordisplays and manipulates her subjectivity. In feminist translation theory, feminist translators refuse to beinvisible in the translation and deconstruct the traditional relationship between the translator and the originalauthor; and they reconstruct the concept of fidelity and advocate the creative treason in translation. In practice,feminist translators tend to adopt some different translation strategies in order to leave more room for theirsubjectivity and creativity. The strategies include prefacing and footnoting, supplementing and hijacking.Besides, to better transmit the original writer’s experimental writing, they would make some experimentaltranslations. By adopting these translation strategies and making some experimental translations, feministtranslators achieve their political purpose that is to gain fair status and treatments for women and makewomen heard and seen in public.Written by a female and feminist writer, The Color Purple with one of its Chinese versions translated byfemale translator will surely better serve the purpose of the present study. And two different Chinese versionsdone by two translators of different genders have been chosen for the comparative study including LuShujiang and Yang Renjing. As a result of different views toward the original novel, they have inevitablyproduced different translations from the same story which vary in degrees of being feminist. Therefore, it isfeasible to study translator’s subjectivity and manifest the female translator’s subjectivity from the perspective of feminist translation theory with the case study of the two Chinese versions of The Color Purple.