A Comparative Study On The Three Chinese Versions Of The Color Purple From The Perspective Of Feminist Translation Theory

In the mid 1960 s, carrying on the achievements of the second wave of feminist movement, the post-war feminism’s scale broadened, combined with many other protest movements during that time taking place in Western Europe and North America, the feminism turns focus from sheer social movement to linguistics and translation studies. As the new notion “gender” involved into the feminist literary criticism to complete the biological sexual difference, the deconstruction theory and the “cultural turn” emerged in the translation in the1980 s, from then on, the two “subordinates”--translation and women which have been underestimated by the original work and men, combined to fight against the invisible position of translator in the text and female in society.In the first half phrase of this theory’s development, the feminist translators fight against sexism by employing radical methods to manipulate language. Lately, the feminist translators emphasize “Androgyny”. In the process of pursuing gender balance, the cross-gender translation can compensate each gender’s shortcomings and end the centre-marginal fighting.This thesis is divided into five chapters. The third part conducts a systemic comparative study of three Chinese versions of The Color Purple. Through the case study picked out from the original text and translated versions, the author tries to analyze three different aspects in detail, firstly, the Preface; secondly, the feminist rewriting; thirdly, the different portrayal of female inner feelings, images and the sex. The translators express a varying degree of feminist consciousness. The feminist translators paid more attention to the details presenting feminist thoughts and were more sensitive towards women’s feelings. The mainstream of the then social ideology and the pressure from such sponsors as publish house and the government also exerted great influences on translators’ translating strategy.In the conclusion section, the author summarizes the limitations and significance, then looking forward to the future development of this theory. The author sincerely hope that this thesis will promote the development of the Feminist translation theory in China and provided readers with more understanding of Alice Walker’s feminism and her masterpiece--The Color Purple. So this thesis could be regarded as a work has contributed to the studies of feminist translation theory and The Color Purple. As the authors’ limitation in researching, it’s also hope that the future post-graduated students can solve the left problems and enlighten the readers with more feminist translation works filling with gender consciousness and translating strategy.