Translator’s Gender Consciousness In Three Chinese Versions Of The Painted Veil

The Painted Veil is a novel written by William Somerset Maugham,a brilliant twentieth-century British writer.It addresses the recurring themes of humanity and marriage in Maugham’s works,but this book’s specific theme is the awakening of feminist consciousness.As the novel’s popularity grows in China,so do academic examinations of it and its Chinese adaptations.This novel features a diverse cast of characters,as well as a multitude of gender-related expressions.Furthermore,as it deals with the topic of feminist consciousness awakening,so the delivery of characters and the author’s gender consciousness are critical.There is currently no research on its Chinese translation from the perspective of Feminist Translation Theory.Therefore,with the aid of Feminist Translation Theory,this thesis seeks to find the translator’s gender consciousness buried in their translation by examining the description of characters of different sexes.Three Chinese adaptations of The Painted Veil are compared in this thesis.The three selected versions are translated by Zhang Baihua（2018）,Zhang Helong（2017）,and Liu Xianzhi（1988）respectively,with Zhang Baihua being a female translator.The Feminist Translation study method “interrogation” and its major translation strategies were employed in the examination.Horizontal and vertical comparisons are used in the comparative analysis,with horizontal comparison referring to the comparison of translations by translators of different biological sexes and vertical comparison referring to the comparison of translations by two male translators of different periods.The major purpose is to investigate if the translator’s gender consciousness is affected by the translator’s biological sex and the publication date,which will be reflected in the Chinese versions’ characterization.Examples of the translators’ discrepancy in gender consciousness were discovered after a careful examination of the texts.Those examples were thoroughly compared and examined,and they will be presented fully in Chapter Four.Through a comparative analysis,this thesis discovers that the female translator has made modulations in the translation process,eliminating part of the descriptive language against women and boosting the feminist awareness of characters.The two male translators,on the other hand,are biased in characterization,which shows up in the molding of derogatory female images and the beautification of male figures.Furthermore,a comparison of the two male translators’ versions reveals that Zhang Helong’s translation in 2017 is less dominated by patriarchal culture and shows stronger feminist awareness.In this case,the biological sex of the translators and the time of release of the translated version have an impact on character description.Translator’s gender consciousness is not fixed with their biological sex,so it can be improved via training in order to better form characters in translation and convey the gender consciousness in the original text.