A Comparative Analysis Of Two Chinese Versions Of The Color Purple From The Perspective Of Feminist Translation

Since the 1970s, with the rapid development of feminist movement and cultural turn of translation study, feminism was introduced into and combined with translation studies.Therefore, feminism translation theory emerged. Feminism translation theory redefined the standards of translation fidelity and emphasized the translators’ subjectivity and gender consciousness. In the process of translation, it advocated the creative treason and could also adopt some radical translation strategies, such as supplementing, prefacing and footnoting,and hijacking, to challenge the traditional translation theories and strategies. It also provided the feminist perspectives and directions for the translation studies. Taking the outstanding American female writer Alice Walker’s masterpiece The Color Purple as an example, this thesis carries out a comparative study on the two Chinese versions from the angle of feminist translation. In this thesis, the comparison is made in three aspects: translation strategies,translators’ subjectivity and gender consciousness, and textual translations. From the comparison we can see that in Tao’s version, supplementing and hijacking are adopted more broadly than in Yang’s version. As far as translators’ subjectivity and gender consciousness are concerned,Tao Jie exerts them in a much stronger and more extensive way than Yang Renjing does. As to textual translations,Tao Jie translates the women’s names and cursing words more neutrally without personal emotions.