From "Patriarchism" To "Androgyny"-a Research On Feminism’s Influence On English Translation Of The Bible

Holy Bible, the Christian canon, has great influence on the west and the whole world. The transmission of the Bible is indispensable of the interpretation and translation of its text, which impregnates translation studies with many translation concepts and methods. From word-for-word translation to sense-for-sense translation to "functional equivalence", Bible translation theories and practices have always been developing and progressing. Upon the appearance of the "cultural turn" in translation studies, Bible translation was felt in the fact that feminism is associated with Bible translation studies. Some Bible translators start to reexamine the Bible from feminine perspective and point out the patriarchal characteristics of the Bible in which women are significantly marginalized. So as to improve women’s status, feminist Bible translators begin to explore Biblical translation theory and retranslate the Bible under the guidance of feminist translation theory. Up to the present, nearly twenty feminist English versions of the Bible have been published.Compared with the previous versions of the Bible, feminist Bible versions are full of subversiveness and expansibility with fresh perspective and novel approach to translation methods. However, up to the present, only few surveys and researches have been done on feminist translators’retranslation of the Bible, most of which mainly focus on the analysis and criticisms of the strategies feminist translators apply in their revision of the Bible, with no comprehensive analysis on this subject. Therefore, this thesis aims to examine the feminism’s influence on English translation of the Bible with a view of the combination of the historical development and characteristics of Bible translation and feminist translation theory in attempt to explore a more appropriate concept and method to translate the Bible under the enlightenment of "androgyny". In this thesis, the diachronic research method, the qualitative analysis method, and the contrastive method are mainly adopted.The thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter gives a brief introduction to the background, purpose, significance, methodology and structure of the research. The second chapter is the literature review in which the historical development and characteristics of the Bible translation, the formation and main points of feminist translation theory, and the deficiencies of previous researches are demonstrated. The third chapter gives a detailed analysis of the necessity and feasibility for feminist translators to retranslate the Bible from feminist perspective, expounds the methods feminist translators employed in their revision of the previous English versions of the Bible, and points out the weakness of the existing feminist biblical translation practices. The fourth chapter introduces the concept of "androgyny" for exploring a more appropriate concept and method to translate the Bible under the enlightenment of "androgyny". The fifth chapter concludes the thesis with a summary of the findings and limitations of the research and also points out the openness of this thesis.Feminism provides a new perspective for Bible translation. Feminist Bible translators’theoretical exploration and translation practices make Bible translation go from "patriarchism" to "neutralization" to "androgyny", which is a new orientation for Bible translation. The concept of "androgyny" has great enlightenment on biblical translation studies and deserves further exploration to offer inspirations for the further development of Bible translation.