| Published in 1985,Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale has attracted a great attention for its speculative genre,dystopian topic as well as the feminist consciousness contained in it.It also makes Atwood a competitive nominator of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature.In 2001,the Chinese version of The Handmaid’s Tale translated by a female translator Chen Xiaowei was published in China.Since then,Chinese scholars have discussed and studied this novel closely.However,most of the attention is focused on the content of this novel;its translation has so far received little attention.This thesis is divided into two parts.The first part focuses on a description of similarities and differences in the feminist consciousness between Chen’s translation and the source text from three aspects: words and phrases,character portrayal and sex-related description.The author finds that the feminist consciousness in the original text is attenuated to a certain extent in Chen’s translation.For example,she attenuates the feminist expressions through understating feminist consciousness and exaggerating the translator’s own feelings,attenuates the feminist description of characters by means of lessening victims’ misery and victimizers’ sin,and attenuates the feminist sex-related description.Then,the thesis uses three key concepts of Bourdieu’s sociology—field,capital,and habitus—to explore the reasons for Chen’s attenuation of the feminist consciousness in the source text.The author finds that in terms of translation fields,China’s relatively conservative cultural and social fields have a great impact on Chen’s translation,prompting her to change the directness and openness of the original,and choose a more euphemistic way of expression.Secondly,as for translation capital,because of Atwood’s relative low popularity in China at the time,the translator has limited cultural capital and symbolic capital,which puts her at a disadvantage in the struggle of the translation field at that time—there is almost no in-depth exploration of the ideological space of the novel;the translator has to try her best to satisfy the requests of the publishers and readers first,and pay attention to the readability of the translation.Thirdly,as far as translation habitus is concerned,on the one hand,the translator attaches great importance to the literariness of the translation;on the other hand,she pays special attention to audience awareness.This habitus makes her translation fluent and literary,but at the same time ignores the faithful re-expression of feminism in the original.In general,Chen Xiaowei,female translator as she is,intentionally or unintentionally attenuates the feminist consciousness of the original through various translation strategies.This attenuation is not only caused by the differences between Chinese and Western social and cultural backgrounds,but is also a result of the translator’s translation capital and her translation habitus.An exploration of this phenomenon and its internal and external reasons from the perspective of Bourdieu’s sociology provides a reference for reviewing and exploring the development of feminism in China. |
