女性主义翻译理论视角下《黄金时代》英译语言学研究

本文是一篇语言学论文,女性主义翻译理论在中国近几十年来开始受到广泛关注，无论是支持的声音还是争议的声音。在翻译领域，女性主义译者勇敢地探索性别问题，重新定义忠实原则，强调译者的主体性，提倡翻译和译者的可见性。女性主义翻译理论的研究在很大程度上为提高翻译水平和女性地位做出了贡献。女性主义译者在翻译过程中常常采用三种翻译策略，即前言和脚注、补充和劫持，以达到创造性的反叛。由于《黄金时代》充满了女性主义意识，本文从女性主义翻译理论的角度对《黄金时代》的英译进行研究是十分必要的。

Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Research Background
West Feminist translation theory is rooted in the three feminist movements as well as the “cultural turn” in translation studies in the 1980s. Based on the theory of gender difference, it attempts to deconstruct the patriarchal discourse-centered society and enhance the status of women through language manipulation and intervention in translation activities.
Feminist translation theory is a rebellion and revolution of traditional translation theory, which contributes a lot to the translation study in feminist translators’ eyes. Firstly, it redefines not only the relationship between the original text and the translation, but also the relationship between the original author and the translator. The feminist translation theory shows that the translation and the original text, the translator and the original author are in an equal position. Secondly, highlighting the translator’s subjectivity is another contribution, which is mainly achieved through the three translation strategies summarized by Flotow, namely prefacing and footnoting, supplementing and hijacking (Flotow, 1997). Finally, it promotes the awakening of feminist consciousness and enhances women’s social status. In general, feminist translation theory provides a new perspective on traditional translation theory.
The feminist translation theory in China began in the early 1980s and was introduced by Professor Zhu Hong. However, it was not received much attention in academics until the advent of the Exploration of Contemporary Western Translation Theory written by Liao Qiyi in the 21st century. The early studies of Chinese feminist translation theory mainly focused on the summarization and evaluation of Western feminist translation theories (Liu, 2004; Xu, 2004; Chen, 2004; Zhang, 2004). Currently the translations of Chinese literary works have been analyzed with the feminist translation theory and been compared with the west ones (Wang, 2014; He, 2015; Chen & Zeng, 2016). Most of these translation analysis focuses on female works, and few people discover the feminist consciousness of male authors and translators. However, The Golden Age has obvious feminist consciousness in both the original text and the English translation.
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1.2 Purpose and Significance of the Study
The feminist translation theory that began in the 1980s, is largely focusing on female works, but few translators pay attention to the works of male authors. However, many male works also show clear feminist consciousness, which is rarely noticed. Therefore, this paper adopts feminist translation theory to explore the male writer Wang Xiaobo’s works The Golden Age and explore what kind of feminist translation strategies have been used by the male translator and the female translator in translating The Golden Age to highlight the feminist consciousness of the original novel and author.
Through this thesis, the author hopes to further improve the research on the development of feminist translation theory in the future, especially the application of feminist translation theory in the translation of Chinese works. It is hoped that feminist translators will no longer be limited to the attention of female works and the neglect or criticism of male works, but will stand at a more practical and inclusive perspective to correctly view works of both sexes.
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Chapter Two Literature Review

2.1 Previous Studies on Feminist Translation
The research on feminist translation theory has been brought into focus worldwide since the 1990s. To tease out the development of feminist translation at home and abroad could help to systematically understand the source, application and future developing direction of feminist translation theory.
2.1.1 Previous Studies on Feminist Translation at Home
After the May Fourth Movement in the 20th century, Chinese women began to make extensive exposure to foreign languages and attempt to translate. Among these translators, the four famous female translators are Yang Jiang, Yang Bi, Yang Yi and Luo Yujun (Hu, Hu, and Li, 2013), but the voice of women at that time was still weak, and the representatives of the translation field were still mostly males. In the 1980s, Professor Zhu Hong introduced the west feminist translation theory into China, and personally translated many works focusing on women’s living conditions in China, and integrated catalogues, such as The Serenity of Whiteness, Festival of Flower, The Stubborn Porridge and Others, A Frolic in the Snowand so on, but in the early 1980s, Professor Zhu Hong’s act did not receive much attention from the academic community. Feminist translation theory didn’t receive widespread attention in China until 2000, when Liao Qiyi’s Contemporary Western Theories Explorationcame out (Yang, 2007).
A. Early Studies on Feminist Translation
Chinese initial feminist translation studies mostly focused on summarizing or evaluating the emergence and development of foreign feminist translation theories. For example, in 2004, Chinese Translators Journal conducted a special subject discussion on feminist translation theory, Liu Junping, Jiang Xiaohua, Xu Lai, Chen Lin, Zhang Jinghua and other scholars have discussed the feminist translation theory from different perspectives.
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2.2 Previous Studies on The Golden Age
The Golden Age is the one of the works that embodies Wang Xiaobo’s utmost effort and it costs him 20 years to complete and perfect it. This work is one of the Time Trilogy and is selected as Asian Weekly’s Top 100 Chinese Novels of the 20th Century. With the unusual first person narrative style, he carries out absurd, jocose and subversive descriptions of the society in the context of the Great Cultural Revolution. This novel portrays two souls who yearn for freedom, inpiduality and courageously challenge authority.
2.2.1 Previous Studies on the Original Text
At present, there are five theoretical perspectives in the study of The Golden Age in domestic academic circles, one is ’Foucault’s discourse of power theory; the second is ’Bakhtin’s carnival theory; the third is ’Sartre’s existentialism; the fourth is Wang ’Xijie’s rhetoric theory; the last is the feminist perspective. Generally, they can be classified into two groups. One is analyzing The Golden Age by adopting foreign theories, and the other is analyzing it by using domestic theory.
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Chapter Three Theoretical Framework ................................................ 15
3.1 A Survey on Feminism and Feminist Translation .............................. 15
3.1.1 The Origin of Feminism and Feminist Translation ....................... 15
3.1.2 The Relationship Between Feminism and Translation ........................... 16
Chapter Four Feminist Consciousness in the Translation of The Golden Age .............. 20
4.1 An Introduction to the Author and His Works ............................. 20
4.2 An Introduction to the Translators and Their Translations ........................ 22
4.3 Feminist Consciousness Showed in the Original Text ........................... 25
Chapter Five Conclusion ......................................... 46
5.1 Major Findings ........................................ 46
5.2 Limitations and Further Suggestions ...................................... 47

Chapter Four Feminist Consciousness in the Translation of The Golden Age

4.1 An Introduction to the Author and His Works
Speaking of the freelance writer Wang Xiaobo, the first thing that comes to our minds is his unusual irony, black humor, and anti-logical writing techniques. His identity in the literary world also seems to have a maverick label like most of the characters portrayed in his work.
A. An Introduction of the Author
In 1952, Wang Xiaobo was born in an intellectual family in Beijing. Due to the influence of his family environment, Wang Xiaobo loves reading since he was a child. In 1984, Wang Xiaobo went to the University of Pittsburgh to study for a postgraduate degree, and in 1986 he obtained a master’s degree. In 1988, after returning to China, he taught at Peking University. However, in 1992, Wang Xiaobo voluntarily resigned and began his free writing career.
Although Wang Xiaobo loves literary writing, he has little contact with the literary world and he has almost no communication with many writers, what’s more, he is not a member of the Writers’ Association. However, his rich imagination and unique writing style make him a rare bird in the literary world. His writing is a postmodernist style with a deconstructive color, and this writing clearly has a kind of advancement at that time. The writers, critics, and readers of that time were not familiar with this writing, so the appearance of Wang Xiaobo was an odd number. Although Wang Xiaobo is not a member of the Writers’ Association, his language is full of fun, and his thoughts and ideas are unique. His imagination is quite rich, and some may look like nonsense, actually, it is not boundless. From the primitive to modern society, the skyto the earth, the world in his mind is particularly broad (Li, 2016). This made Wang Xiaobo a master outside the system and a very influential writer in the 1990s.
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Conclusion

5.1 Major Findings
Feminist translation theory has begun to receive widespread attention in recent decades in China, whether it is the voice of support or the voice of controversy. In the field of translation, feminist translators bravely explore gender issues, redefine the fidelity principle, emphasize translator’s subjectivity, and advocate translation and translator’s visibility. To a large extent, the study of feminist translation theory has made great contributions to the improvement of translation and the status of women. Feminist translators often use three translation strategies, namely, prefacing and footnoting, supplementing, and hijacking to achieve creative rebellion in the translation process. Since The Golden Age is full of feminist consciousness, it’s very necessary for this paper to study the English translation of The Golden Age from the perspective of feminist translation theory.
In this novel, the author Wang Xiaobo expresses his feminist consciousness by using conservative Chinese language. In the English translation, the two translators reproduce the feminist consciousness of the original author and the original text in the Western countries through some feminist translation strategies, but this act has hardly attracted the attention of the academic community. From the perspective of feminist translation theory, this thesis mainly discusses how the feminist consciousness of the original novel The Golden Age is revealed, and what kind of translation strategy is utilized by the two translators in the translation to reproduce the feminist consciousness of the original novel. This paper has reached the following conclusions through the discussion of the previous chapters.
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