Translation Variation From The Perspective Of Feminism

With the emergence of cultural turn in translation studies in the 1990s, translation theorists start to pay attention to the cultural and political factors that influence translation. Translation is increasingly regarded as a creative activity and the traditional dichotomy of translation is broken. Thus, translation is not only a passive linguistic transfer from one language to another but an active process influenced by such exterior elements as culture, politics, economy and so on. This has imposed a great influence on the translation studies. Thus, gender as an important part of culture become an important study perspective in linguistics and the translation studies. It is unavoidable that the feminist translation comes to the front stage of translation studies. Many feminist translation scholars do lots of research into the translator's subjectivity, equivalence, fidelity and the difference between the western and Chinese feminist translation research, etc. and have made many achievements. By analyzing those contributions, it is found that in feminist translation, feminist translators question three basic issues in traditional translation studies: fidelity, the strategies of feminist translation and the subjectivity of the translator.Translation variation theory is a translation theory with Chinese character, proposed by Huang Zhonglian on the base of his many years' translation practice and the enlightenment of translation history. It centers on the purpose and function of the target text and the communicative effect of the target text (TT) and has been proved to be a powerful translation theory in translating practical texts. It proposed translation ways of supplementing, abstracting, editing, reporting, abridging, etc. to meet the need of certain target language (TL) readers (Huang Zhonglian, 2002). Translation variation theory in nature deconstructs the traditional norm of fidelity, advocate the subjectivity of the translator and proposes flexible and effective translation strategies in translation practice.By studying the feminist translation and the theory of translation variation, a hypothesis was put forth that the theory of translation variation provides theoretical support for feminist translation in the following three ways: fidelity, the strategies of feminist translation and the subjectivity of the translator. And in literary translation, the adoption of the theory of translation variation can be helpful in yielding a work with feminist ideology.Sister Carrie is one of the great masterpieces of Theodore Dreiser with feminist ideas. There are three translation versions for this novel, Pan Qingling's version, Tong Wenhua's version, Wang Kefei and Zhang Shaoning's version. Of the three versions, Pan Qingling's version is similar to Wang Kefei and Zhang Shaoning's. Wang Kefei and Zhang Shaoning's version is a traditional full translation and Tong Wenhua's version is a translation variation with a feminist view. So, the comparison provides proofs for the hypothesis above.This thesis is divided into five chapters. First of all, it briefly introduces the topic, the language data, research methodology and the organization of the thesis. Chapter Two is devoted to a literature review on feminist translation and the theory of translation variation narrating the definition, methods and principles of translation variation. Chapter Three is an introduction to the combination of feminist translation and the theory of translation variation. Chapter Four is a case study of the two different translation versions of Sister Carrie with six kinds of translation variation strategies, namely, deletion, translation and writing, edited translation, condensed translation, adaptation translation and explanatory translation. Emphasis is placed on analyzing the support of translation variation theory for feminist translation. Chapter Five concludes the theme of the thesis, stating the limitations of the study and suggestions for further study. The attempt made in this thesis is expected to be a spur in this area and eventually it is hoped that it could be of some help for the feminist translation practice.