Gender-based Ideology: An Analysis Of The English Versions Of Luotuo Xiangzi

Gender Ideology refers to particular social belief which helps maintain gender inequality. The present research studies the influence of gender ideology on translation based on the English translations of Lao She’s work Luotuo Xiangzi and from the perspective of gender. The work of Luotuo Xiangzi is a typical contemporary novel in vernacular Chinese, fraught with vividness, liveliness and humor, and its strong local flavor is almost synonymous with the work itself. Since the four English versions of Luotuo Xiangzi came out, researchers have conducted numerous studies on Evan King’s version and Shi Xiaojing’s version with few studies on the other two translators’ versions. Their researches have been conducted mainly with the following theoretical models, such as domestication and foreignization, Skopo Theory, Adaptation Theory, Nida’s Functional Equivalence, Relevance Theory, Hermeneutics, Translation Ethics, and Rewriting Theory and so on. And their main research objectives revolve around the transference of language in the original to the English versions, and the reproduction of the original style in the English versions. However, our literature review reveals that few scholars have taken the gender factor into consideration in their researches to investigate the meaning generation mechanism, which is a pity for such a “feminist text”. Studying the different interpretations and outputs generated due to different genders of different translators from the perspective of gender-based ideology makes our analysis of the English translation of Luotuo Xiangzi, a work full of Lao She’s “male chauvinism”, a particularly meaningful project. The translator’s gender perspective also contributes to the researches on the impacts brought about by different translators to the translations.The data of the present research is extracted from Lao She’s Luotuo Xiangzi and its four English versions, namely, Evan King’s version in 1945, Jean M.James’ s version in 1979, Shi Xiaojing’s version in 2001, and Howard Goldblatt’s version in 2010. The four translators happen to be two female translators and two male translators. The present author would make a comparison of the four English versions with a focus on the construction of female identity, feminity and sexuality, investigating at a more specific level, the lexicon, syntax and the building of female image and so on. Considering that scholars such as Lakoff and Spender have acclaimed that women have a different language system compared with men’s language system and translations would bear the print of their creators because of their different social and cultural backgrounds, social classes, and social roles, the data will be those which could best represent the different interpretations and expressions of different translators due to different thought patterns belonging to female and male in the linguistic as well as literary sense.The theoretical framework of the present research is the feminist translation theory proposed by feminist translators represented by Sherry Simon and Louise Von Flotow and gender theory. The feminist translators launched a “revolution” in translation studies, and as a result, the old binary confrontation has disintegrated, the “fidelity” in a traditional sense has been challenged and the problem of identity becomes a political issue, which jointly exert significant influences on both translation theory and translation practice. Since the 1960 s, sexism in language has aroused wide attention from feminist activists, represented by Robin Lakoff’s “women’s language”; and a feminist translation movement took place in the aim of highlighting female identity and striving for more power in discourse for female speakers, represented by Flotow’s Translation and Gender and Simon’s Gender in Translation. In an era of post-feminism, sexist language is not confined to overt expressions such as language reforms, but has transferred to a deeper level of covert expressions such as stereotypes and thus relates more closely to our daily life, manifesting a more realistic significance. On the other hand, the gender theory has a closer connection with the hot issue of gender nowadays, relating to the discussion of women’s rights and status. Men’s authority has been dissolved, and the disproportionate status of women has been reclaimed. Power and discourse are always inextricably related, and the gender topic concentrates itself on how the power distribution system works in a discourse, revealing the inequalities generated by gender factor. The present thesis will synthesize research findings in the two domains, and discuss the usage of language critically in order to dig out the underlying causes beneath the appearances.The conclusions of the present thesis are as follows:(1) The gender of the translators does affect the production of translation. Translators of alternative gender will have different understandings of the original text, which would lead to different translation strategies chosen by each translator. As a result, different styles will come into being. Male translators seem to be more creative and daring than female translators concerning the choice of translation strategies, manifested in the more additions, omissions and adaptations etc., and the “hijacking” strategy does exist in female translator’s works, manifested in more “simplification” for certain purpose during the translation process.(2) The presupposition that language used by women should be more polite and tactful made by linguists couldn’t get support from our research. It means that with the efforts made by various women movements, the division of labor in society is less and less dominated by the gender factor. As a consequence, the identity of nationalism and gender is more of an independent individual than of a hierarchical system, which finds its expression in the obfuscation of language use of male and female. In other words, female is no longer restricted in language use to make a point that they belong to the less powerful party.(3) Gender is a related factor in the translation process, but due to the joint influence of culture, politics, historical background etc., we can not always ascribe the differences to gender factor. Gender belongs to the category of ideology, so we could hardly observe its influence in a direct way; we can only draw our conclusions from the inference of paratexts, the interviews of the writer and the final versions etc. Therefore, in order to produce a real “gender-neutral” translation, translators of different genders should evade different understandings of the same source texts and different language usages due to their gender awareness or bias.The innovative points of the present research lie in that few scholars have studied the work from the perspective of gender while it is worthy of discussion and exploration on whether different translations would be produced in view of gender factor, since the battles in the field of politics, economics, and literary circles have led to different gender discourses for long. At a second point, researches relating to the combination of gender and translation at home have a late start and a slow development, resulting in a weak gender consciousness and the relevant research needs go further. It is hoped that more attention in translation studies could be drawn to the issue related to the gender of the translator.