The Feminism Perspective: Subjectivity Of Eileen Chang’s Chinese-english Self-Translation

As cultural turn is coming, the combination of translation and gender paves the wayfor translation studies from the perspective of Feminism theory. Feminism translationtheory highlights gender identity under the play of translator’s subjectivity in translationprocess for the first time in the history of translation.Eileen Chang, who is one of the most famous female writers in Chinese literature, isoften discussed on her Chinese writings. However, little attention is paid to hertranslation, which is one of her important literary achievements. The present authorattempts to explore the translator’s subjectivity from the perspective of Feminismtranslation theory. It is discovered that Eileen Chang gives a full play to translator’ssubjectivity via a careful analysis of her translation works, especially her choice of theoriginal works and her employment of translation methods. The thesis gives a concreteanalysis of how Eileen Chang plays translator’s subjectivity by the choice of the originalworks and the strategies of translation; meanwhile, the author illustrates the analysis fromtwo aspects of theory and practice. In theory, Feminism translation theory stresses theequality between the author and the translator, instead of subordinate relationship. Inpractice, Feminism translators violate the traditional principle of the translators’ invisibility through the selection of the original texts and translation strategies.Eileen Chang’s works focus on human existence, which is from Eileen Chang’smature female consciousness. Eileen Chang chooses the tragic character as a translationobject to show the extremely low status of women in China for the world readers, to getreaders’ sympathy and to make people notice women’s situations. The reason why EileenChang chooses the tragic woman in translations is that the tragic Woman shows the lostof human nature in survival trading. In Eileen Chang’s novel-The Rouge of the North(怨女), the leading lady. Yindi, is a typical tragically character, whose tragedy is led by thedesire for money in such Feudal society. In Eileen Chang’s self-translation of The Rougeof the North, she is bold to use strategies of supplementing, prefacing and hi-jacking tostate her Feminism thought directly and sharply.The thesis aims to stir the concern of the readers on Eileen Chang’s Englishtranslation work. Meanwhile, the thesis makes a comprehensive study of her works so asto further contribute the development of Chinese translation.