Studies On Gender And Translation From Two Perspectives:Constructionist And Essentialism

Gender and language are interwoven all the time. Since the1960s, the study of gender and language has developed rapidly. This is mainly ascribed to two factors. The first is the development of sociolinguistics. As an interdisciplinary subject, sociolinguistics study the gender issue related to education and identity in the light of linguistics, psychology, sociology and etc. One of the most representative theories is the "women’s language" proposed by Robin Lakoff in her book Language and Woman s Place, which lists linguistic features of females.The second factor is the development of women movement. Western feminists claim that the discrimination against women and the inferior position of women should be reflected in language. Along this line, translation studies have focused more on the gender of the translator than ever before.There are two paradigms in the study of gender and translation, namely essentialism and constructionist. Traditional translation theories emphasize the fidelity to the source text and the invisibility of the translators. Translation, just like women in the patriarchal society, is subordinate and derivative. However, the development of feminist movement affords a new perspective to the translation studies so as to engender the feminism translation theory. The feminist translators criticize the subordination of women to men and of the translated text to the original text, arguing for restoring the authority of women and translated texts. The constructionist paradigm features some radical translation strategies, such as supplementing, hijacking, prefacing and footnoting to highlight the gender awareness and establish women’s identity. Essentialists show that female and male translators tend to use language differently in some context in translation.Here, in order to present a rather more comprehensive picture of how the gender/sex of the translator affects his or her translation, this thesis looks into the two paradigms and answers the questions as follow:(1) How do Chinese translators and Western feministic translators construct female identity in their practice?(2) What are the distinctive features of men and women’s translations based on the essentialism? The data are collected from the novels the color purple and four Chinese translations.The findings are summarized as follow:(1) The gender-based translation practice, whether in the West or in China, follows almost the same strategies. However, Western feminist translators have more specific and politically-related aims than Chinese.(2) Compared with male translators, female translators with female awareness are skillful in expressing women’s feelings. Because female translators are more sensitive than men to the patriarchal culture embedded in language and gender elements in the original text so as to manipulate the original.(3) There is no feminist translator in the exact sense of the Western feminism in China. Chinese translators are less radical in manipulating the original text than Westerners.(4) Translators are influenced by their own biological sex in shaping their final product. Women translators tend to use more intensifiers, euphemistic words, adjective phrases with repeated words and parallel and coordinate patterns than men when translating the same text.As a study of gender and translation from the perspectives of essentialism and constructionist, this thesis has provided a more objective and comprehensive study of gender and translation, and thus contributed to linguistics and translation studies in a broad sense.