Translation Within The Framework Of Feminism

With the Cultural Turn in Translation Studies, "interdisciplinary approach has gained ground in recent years", and "translation has now established strong primary relationships to essentially non-linguistic disciplines" (Mundy 2001:187). This has given an opportunity for the study of ideology of feminism to involve in translation studies, which is traditionally concerned mainly with simple contextual comparison among different versions of translation and the monotonous assessment standard of "fidelity" or "loyalty" to the source text.Translation studies and women have been closely connected with each other through history because they have the similar low identities and social status. Feminism and translation both try to escape from the bottom of the society and become equal with either men or the original and enjoy the similar right and privilege with them. When the position of a translator is taken by a woman, she has inherited double inferiority and her fight will be more difficult.The ideology of a feminist translator involves the strong purpose to overthrow patriarchy power and the mission of building a friendly connection between two peoples with two different cultures and social background. No matter how hard she tries to restrain it, her strong sense of feminism is ready to execute its influence on the practice and the products of translation. There is no denial that every translator having his particular thoughts thus makes different alteration to the translation in accordance with his aesthetic opinion. Likewise, the feminist translation reflects in what way the ideology of a feminist translator changes the practice and the product of the translating act.This research paper consists of systematic summary of feminist translationtheories, its recent findings, and profound discussion of the influence of the ideology of feminist translators over translation and a specific analysis of some related texts. The purpose of this paper is to reveal the similar or different strategies and methods of translation respectively adopted by Chinese feminist translators and western feminist translators due to their dissimilar personality, unique cultural background and different traditions of translation although they share something in common.Although feminist translation has encountered difficulties and setbacks of all descriptions including criticism arising from the view that gender does make a critical difference in translation from the original text, what cannot be denied is that feminist translation will sustain its development and improvement in practice and theories alike in the coming years and its influence over translation of a wide variety. Feminist translation will be like any other disciplines, making contributions to the progress of culture, civilization of the society and the equality between men and women.