Reflections On Translation Criteria In Literary Translation From The Perspective Of Feminism

Translation criterion plays so important a role in translation studies that no researcher can afford to ignore it. The traditional discussions on translation criteria, such as the three-character principle (i.e. faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance), the essence-alike theory, and the transgration in China and the "three principles" and "dynamic equivalence "in western countries, have always been focusing on the original, going round the choices of single words or sentences, evaluating to what degree the translated texts are faithful to the originals, hunting for a subjectively recognized better translated text. With the emergence of Cultural Turn in the field of translation, researchers begin to ponder over translation from diverse perspectives, evaluating the translated texts from specific historical, social and cultural angles, which has undoubtedly broadened our vision toward translation criteria.Gender, a very important part of cultural research, has opened up a new horizon for our translation studies. Women and translated texts have shared a common secondary status in their respective hierarchies, so feminist translation theorists have put present translation criteria in doubt for the first time, maintaining that the core of the present translation criteria is fidelity. In a sense, fidelity is equal to the moral standard we often applied to judge a married woman in the old society. Feminist translators further point out that fidelity should be shown "neither to the author nor to the reader, but toward the writing project - a project in which both writer and translator participate" (Sherry Simon, 1996:2) Thus translation has become a means for women to fight for political rights, to make themselves seen and heard in the translated texts and to "achieve political visibility." (Flotow, 2004:43) Radical feminist translators even try to hijack the original to serve this purpose.The radical translation strategies prevailing in western countries have not found intense echoes in China because of different cultural heritages but they have inspired many Chinese researchers to re-consider many seem-to-be-settled questions from the perspective of feminism. Female translators with gender awareness have tried to adopt mild strategies to display their feminist thoughts in translation. This thesis falls into five chapters. The first chapter serves as a brief introduction to the whole thesis. The second chapter is intended to expound the connotation of feminism and the main propositions by feminists. The third chapter gives a brief historical review of the debates about translation criteria at home and abroad in an attempt to reveal the characteristics of the traditional translation criteria. The development of translation criteria is also explored in this chapter. The fourth chapter mainly expounds the translation criteria from the feminist perspective with the focus on the significance of feminist's re-interpretation of fidelity. The thesis ends with the analysis of Are Women As Good As Men and Men and Women translated by Zhu Hong, a Chinese translator with very strong gender awareness. The purpose of doing so is to show how feminist translators give expression to feminist translation criterion in the translated texts.