An Exploration Of Creative Treason In The Translation Of The Rouge Of The North From The Perspective Of Feminism Translation Theory

It’s the similar low rank of both women and translation over a long history that conduces to the combination of feminism and translation, which develops into a bran-new theory — feminism translation theory. Feminism scholars have sought to explore a more appropriate relationship between the original version and translation,that is, symbiosis rather than subordination and to prove that translation infuses a new interpretation and vigor to the original version instead of smearing its pureness.Additionally, feminism translators consider translation as a political activity with the aim of removing gender discrimination in language and achieving the visibility of women in translations. Meanwhile, they regard translation as a creative treason with cultural interference into consideration instead of the mechanical transforming of the words. Consequently, feminism translators have always employed three major translation strategies to perform creative treason: supplementing or compensation,footnoting and prefacing, hijacking.Feminism translation theory has attracted more and more attention by Chinese scholars since 2002. However, different from radical feminism thought and distinct political motive in West, Chinese scholars and translators with feminism thought, are used to employing more moderate rendering strategies in order to make women’s voice heard in the translation; additionally, they have devoted themselves to searching for “lost” works about women by exploring the translations and translators with feminism thinking in China. Eileen Chang is a female writer and translator equipped with deep grumous feminism thought in Chinese literary history. Compared to her position as a female writer which has been brought into attentive focus and research all the time, Eileen Chang’s identity as a female translator has received little deserved research, especially with regard to her feminism thought hidden in her translations. In light of this inadequacy, one of her most typical self-translation---Yuan-nv is chosen as the object of study to embody her feminism ideology. The thesis is intended to explore the process in which Eileen Chang highlights the creative treason from the perspective of feminism translation theory by analyzing the typical feminism translation strategiesapplied in the translation of Yuan-nv. In a word, the combination of Eileen Chang’s such work and feminism translation theory is expected to provide referential materials and extended examples for later literary translation, especially for the translation about Eileen Chang’ works; meanwhile, it can be regarded as the resource to benefit the future development of feminism theory in China.The main part of the thesis includes four chapters. Chapter one elaborates on the combination of feminism thought and translation studies, and illustrates three core concepts of feminism translation theory. Chapter two describes Eileen Chang’s experiences, writing features and feminism thought; meanwhile, the characters,outline and feminism manifestation of The Rouge of the North are all introduced.Chapter three, keeping the focus on Eileen Chang’s ideology in the course of translation, discloses that Eileen Chang is absolutely influenced by her individual feminism thought with analyzing and researching four distinctive aspects. Chapter four puts a special emphasis on the exploration of Eileen Chang’s feminism translation strategies applied in The Rouge of the North from the perspectives of culture and linguistics with a collection of instances as proofs. Eileen Chang not only employs supplementing, deletion, prefacing and hijacking in accordance with western feminism translators culturally, but adopts other unique linguistic techniques: special sentence structure and irony. Conclusion outlines both the significance and limitations of the thesis.