| Shui Hu Zhuan, one of the Four Chinese Classics, is firstly fully translated to thewestern countries in English by Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973) and it is also claimed to bethe only translation work of the feminist writer. ThoughShui Hu Zhuan devotes muchspace to tell about men’s stories, yet it just highlights the subordinate status of femalesand their lack of discourse power. Pearl has both American and Chinese culturalbackground, yet she cannot but only be a “marginal person†wandering around the twocultural systems but never being able to completely fit in either; besides, her femaleidentity prevents her from obtaining the “discourse power†dominated by males.Through observing Pearl’s marginal identity and feminist thoughts, we can have a newperspective to expound her translation selection and her different translation strategies.Chapter One presents an overview of feminism background and its development,and discusses about gender and language, gender and translation from the perspective ofcultural studies; Chapter Two illustrates Pearl’s marginal identity to Chinese andAmerican culture system, and her feminist writing in the early representativework—The Good Earth; Chapter Three conducts a brief introduction on Shui Hu Zhuanin terms of its original versions and different translation versions; Chapter Four isdevoted to case study of contrastive analysis between All Men Are Brothers (Pearl’stranslation of Shui Hu Zhuan) and the other two male translations; finally, thedissertation concludes that Pearl’s translation selection is influenced by her marginalidentity and feminism, and her different translation of women-related contents frommale translations is to a degree striving for women’s muted discourse power. This studyis expected to explore a new academic perspective for studies on All Men Are Brothersand other women-muted classics. |
