A Study On The Female Translator’s Subjectivity Of The Old Man And The Sea —From The Perspective Of Feminist Translation Theory

There are altogether over 20 Chinese versions of The Old Man and the Sea since it was published in 1952; the versions translated by Hai Guan, Wu Lao, Yu Guangzhong and Huang Yuanshen are popularly read. It was Eileen Chang who first translated this work into Chinese. According to the materials available, the most researches about The Old Man and the Sea focus on several perspectives: Nida?s Functional Equivalence, Relevance Theory, Translation Context, Feminist Translation Theory; but few researches were done on the female translator?s subjectivity. Taking The Old Man and the Sea translated by Eileen Chang as the subject for research, the author attempts to make a comparative study on the two Chinese versions of Eileen Chang and Yu Guangzhong from the perspective of female translation theory, in the hope of finding out the manifestations of female translator?s subjectivity.This thesis includes six chapters; first chapter gives a general introduction of research background and significance. Chapter two is the literature review which retrospects the relative research on The Old Man and the Sea at home. Chapter three is theoretical framework in which the author introduces the development of female theory and the combination with translation. Moreover, this part includes the definition of female translator subjectivity as well as its relative study at home and abroad. In chapter four, the author comes up with questions and research methods, and the narration of datum collection. Chapter five is the main body which contains four parts: introduction to Eileen Chang and Yu Guangzhong as well as their versions; female translator?s subjectivity revealed in Eileen Chang?s translation strategies:prefacing, supplementing and hi-jacking; female translator?s subjectivity manifesting in translation practice description of appearance of characters, expression of emotion of characters, word choice; factors affecting Eileen Chang?s translator?s subjectivity: unhappy childhood and lover?s betrayal. Chapter six is the conclusion of the thesis.On the basis of feminist theory, this thesis aims to analyze the manifestation of female translator?s subjectivity in several aspects by comparing Eileen Chang?s and Yu Guangzhong?s version during the translating process. In this thesis, the manifestation of female translator?s subjectivity is divided into two aspects: first, according to Louise Von Flotow, the strategies usually employed by feminist translators are prefacing, footnoting and supplementing, hijacking; second, in accordance with the main elements of novel-writing and the features of this novel, the author classifies the manifestation of female translator?s subjectivity into three facets: description of appearance, expression of emotion and word choice. The author attempts to explore whether the two translators express their female consciousness and manifest their female translator?s subjectivity or not from the above two aspects. Through analysis,this thesis finds that Eileen Chang shows stronger female consciousness than the male translator in the selection of the translation strategies, description of appearance, expression of emotion and word choice. Influenced by unfortunate childhood and lover?s betrayal, Eileen Chang exerts her female translator?s subjectivity and expresses her strong female consciousness through degrading the male images and creating doughty female images in her works and translations. Hatred towards her father and eagerness to maternal love which make her produce the earliest gender awareness and desperately disappointing to her husband, which lead to express her strong female consciousness in her works and translations and exert her female translator?s subjectivity.