A Study Of The Interventionist Feminist Strategy In Gladys Yang’s Translation

Based on the interventionist feminist strategy, this thesis will take Leaden Wings translated by Gladys Yang into a case study, with the aim of examining how the translator carries out the intervention in the translation and the reason for this intervention. This study will analyze the whole process of translation, answering the following questions:(a) what strategies does the translator employ in the translation? And (b) why does the translator carry out the intervention? This research has the expectations of firstly, from a theoretical viewpoint, enriching the study of "unfaithfulness"; and secondly, based on the strategies adopted by Gladys as reference, providing applicable suggestive strategies for the C-E translation of Chinese feminist literature, with the intention of contributing to the course of the "Going Out" of Chinese feminist literature.Literature connected to this study display, firstly, interventionist feminist strategy is generated from the translation between English and French. The translator would like to realize their political purposes by employing such strategies as supplementing, prefacing and footnoting, and hijacking in the translation; however, whether these strategies are applicable in C-E translation requires further discussion. Secondly, the previous studies on interventionist feminist strategy all concentrate on the text analysis and ignore the stages before and after translation. Thus, based on a case study of Leaden Wings, this study observes the translation activity through example analysis from the perspective of feminism, and findings are examined as below:(a) the inclination of feminism is unveiled in the stage of selecting text;(b) the addition of preface and afterword;(c) the foregrounding of female figures in paratexts to highlight the feminist theme; and (d) the application of supplementing, omission and emphasis in the translation of the main text. As a result, feminism as the subject is more evident after the intervention compared with the original text; moreover, the strategies Gladys employs are milder than those by western feminist translators. The reasons for Gladys’s intervention are also that:(a) she considers the reader’s expectation under the influence of target language environment; and (b) the identity of being a woman drives Gladys to pay attention to the introducing of Chinese female literature.Finally, the study intends to draw the following conclusions:(a) Due to the consideration of readers’ expectations and personal motivations, the intervention Gladys conducts in the translation makes the theme of feminism more explicit in the text;(a) under the environment of social tradition and Chinese translation academia, the strategies Gladys applied in the translation are milder than those adopted by western feminist translators, and can serve as ideas to borrow for other translators involved in the C-E translation of Chinese feminist literature;(c) Gladys can be regarded as a Chinese feminist translator in the translation activity of Leaden Wings, though she never assures this identity.In the initial research design, this study intends to discuss the effect of intervention. However, due to the difficulty in collecting materials regarding the readers’ feedback, an analysis of the effect of intervention could not be conducted with strong evidence. This gap is expected to be filled with more materials discovered as question for further study; meanwhile, more similar studies should be conducted to explore other strategies employed by Gladys and other translators, with the objective of providing more references for the "Going Out" of Chinese feminist literature. Besides, more attention should be given to the popularization of the text and reader’s acceptance, and more studies should be conducted to explore what strategies can be suggested to apply in order to balance the relationship between following the traditional translation principle and enhancing the reader’s acceptance.