Translator’s Subjectivity From The Perspective Of Feminist Translation Theory

With the "cultural turn" in translation study, translation researchers begin to pay their attention to the cultural factors, such as political factors, economic factors and social and history factors, not just to the language factors. As the subject of translation activities, the translator, who has long been neglected, has come to get recognition, and the translator’s subjectivity has also been affirmed and becomes a crucial component in translation study. With the vigorous development of the western feminist movement, feminist extends the gender into the field of language, then produces the feminist translation. The research of feminist translation divides feminist translation theory and feminist translation practice. The combination of feminism and translation leads to the birth of feminist translation theory, which brings the gender perspective into translation study, especially into the study of translator’s subjectivity; on the other hand, feminist translation practice embodies translator’s subjectivity from the perspective of feminist translation theory through the choice of source texts, the selection of translation strategies and the application of creative treason.This thesis focuses on translator’s subjectivity from the perspective of feminist translation theory. In theory, feminist translation theory emphasizes translator’s subjectivity in the following two aspects. Firstly, feminist translation theory attaches great importance to the equal status between the translator and the author so as to highlight the female translator’s identity in the translated text. Secondly, it redefines "fidelity" from a feminist perspective and argues that feminist translator should be faithful to the "writing project" which is jointly participated by both the author and the translator instead of being faithful to the author or the original text so as to highlight the female translator’s subjectivity by advocating "rewriting" of the translated text. In practice, feminist translators emphasize the presence of the translator’s identity and foreground translator’s subjectivity, which is mainly reflected in the choice of source texts, the selection of translation strategies and the application of creative treason.As an outstanding female writer in the history of Chinese modern literature, Eileen Chang is one of the writers who can freely use bilingual writing and translation in the20th century. The existing researches, to some degree, mostly focus on analyzing one of her translated works or giving a general introduction to her translations. This thesis selects three English translated works as the source texts, The Golden Cangue《金锁记》,Shame Amah《桂花�'�.阿小悲》and The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai《海上花列传》to analyze how translator’s subjectivity is reflected in Eileen Chang’s English translation practice through the choice of source texts, the selection of translation strategies and the application of creative treason based on feminist translation theory.The research proves that female translator’s subjectivity is well reflected in Eileen Chang’s English translation practice. However, owing to the limitations of personal knowledge and resource collection, as for the deeper manifestation of the theory, the quantities of the source texts, and the detailed analysis of examples from the source texts, a lot of work remains to be done in the further study.