A Study On Body Language Translation From The Perspective Of Feminism

People can exchange information through both verbal and non-verbal communication. Non-verbal communication mainly refers to people’s gesture, posture, facial expression and so on. Being different from pure body movements, body language is a kind of particular body movement that can convey silent information, express emotions, exchange ideas and illustrate intentions. Body language is an essential literary means to shape characters in novels and also has special expressive function. As it’s more vivid, specific, informative and artistic than verbal language, readers thus can taste the exquisite, implicit, vague and indistinct spirit and charm that verbal language cannot express to achieve the artistic perfection that the minority overtakes the majority and silence speaks better than sounds. The important role that body language plays in novels determines its decisive role in translation. Literary creation has always be centered in describing "people" and Chinese classic novels pay more attention on people’s "action". The writers depict every word and action of the characters painstakingly via words as the only tool and they try to show the characters’ personality, the hidden "subtle emotion" and interpersonal relationship through the specific body language. By this token, the body language is even more important than the verbal language in novels and it plays as a silent "explainer" to make a clean breast of the "complete information" among all characters. Meanwhile, as the feminist movement and research is emerging and developing prosperously, women’s status has improved greatly and people’s view towards women has vastly changed. Women began to take part in various professions including writing and translation, which makes the relationship between feminism and translation become closer and closer. And in feminist novels, body language also plays a crucial role and the readers could realize the writers’ feminist thoughts though the description of body language to a large extent. The study results of both the body language and feminism are led by the western researchers. Therefore, the study of body language translation from a feminist perspective would be a fresh and meaningful topic.This thesis attempts to study the translation of body language in feminist works and takes The Golden Note of the famous British feminist writer Doris Lessing as the example under Tytler’s principles on translation. It contains six chapters. The first chapter mainly introduces the background and significance of the research and the structure of the thesis. The second chapter addresses feminism, feminist translation and body language both at home and abroad together with the domestic research situation of body language translation. Chapter Three is the theoretical framework of this thesis, which includes the relationship between feminism and translation, the definition, classification and function of body language, Tytler’s principles on translation and the comparison between Chinese and English body language. Chapter Four mainly introduces Doris Lessing, her work The Golden Notebook and the Chinese version employed in this thesis as well as Doris Lessing’s writing style and characterization. Chapter Five is the core part of this thesis. With all the introductions, this chapter classifies the body language in feminist novels into five types, namely facial expression, gesture, posture, costume and proxemics. Proceeding with these five aspects and combining with the Chinese version of The Golden Notebook translated by Professor Chen Caiyu and Liu Xinmin, I would make specific research and analysis of the body language translation. Chapter Six is the last chapter to make summary of this thesis while pointing out the limitation and implication of this topic.