A Comparative Study Of The Two Chinese Versions Of The Color Purple: From The Perspective Of Feminist Translation Theory

With the eruption of the “Culture Turn” in the circle of translation studies,there emerged the concept of feminist translation,which is a combination of feminism and translation.Led by scholars such as Sussane de Lotbiniere-Harwood,Sherry Simon,Lori Chamberlain,Luise Von Flotow and Barbara Godard,feminist translation started to gain an influence.They analyze translations from a gendered perspective and use the translation as a way to speak for women as well as to reveal gender discrimination against women in literature.Summarized by Luise Von Flotow,there are three strategies that feminist translators usually employ,namely,supplementing,prefacing and footnoting,and hijacking.The Color Purple is the masterpiece of the famous African American writer Alice Walker,which focuses on the oppression that black women suffer at that time.The thesis,with feminist translation theory as its theoretical foundation,compares the two Chinese versions of the novel,which are translated by Tao Jie and Yang Renjing respectively.In the thesis,the author mainly compares the prefaces of the two translated versions to see the translators' understanding of the novel and the main body part to present how the two express the part concerning women's sufferings and their fight against the male-dominated world by means of gaining self-recognition and pursuing independence.With the comparative analysis of the two,the thesis finds that when encountering the same text that contains feminist ideas,the feminist translator,can have a deeper understanding of the content and the intention of the author.