从女性主义翻译理论视角下浅析张爱玲译作

论文总字数：27100字

摘 要

女性主义运动影响到文学和翻译时，便产生了女性主义翻译理论。该理论为女性主义思想研究提出新的角度。女性主义译者认为语言是能够积极地干预意义的创造。女性主义译者运用不同言语风格及策略在译文中凸显女性身影。充分显示出女性主义意识。张爱玲除了是一位杰出的女性作家，在翻译研究方面也做出了巨大贡献，张爱玲的翻译成就一向被文名所遮，但是她的翻译确实别具一格。作为一位女性作家，与西方女性主义的翻译相比，她的女性主义翻译更是以女性主体为基础的。本文通过对女性主义翻译理论在中国的发展，探讨了张爱玲的译作，为张爱玲的翻译研究提供了方向。根据女性主义翻译家经常使用的翻译策略---前言、脚注、替代以及劫持，分析了张爱玲的译作，从而探讨她的女性主义思想。作者试图通过展示这篇文章来充实女性主义翻译理论以及增强读者对张爱玲译作的理解。

关键词: 女性主义翻译理论；翻译策略；女性主义思想；张爱玲

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 2

2.1 A Review of Eileen Chang’s Personal Experience and Several Translation Works 2

2.2 A Review of Feminist Translation Theory 5

3. Eileen Chang’s Feminist Consciousness Displayed in Her Translation Strategies 6

3.1 Prefacing and Footnoting 6

3.2 Supplementing 7

3.3 Hijacking 9

4. Conclusion 10

Work Cited 12

1. Introduction

The origin of feminist can be traced back to the feminist movement in the late 19^th century and early 20^th century. The movement aims at exposing the low status of females and fighting for the equal rights between males and females. The feminist has profound influence on academia. The methods of the feminist researches play a positive role in many fields, including literature, history and linguistics. The feminist translation theory is a method of researches which feminist translators take political culture into the field of literature.

In Luis von Flotow’s book Translation and Gender：Translating in the “Era of Feminism”, she systematically introduces the background of feminist translation and the relationship between translation and gender, and she summarizes the redefinition of translator’s identity and feminist translation from the perspective of feminism．What’s more, Flotow discusses what is called interventionist feminist translation in the book．She writes in her book that “translators who are already politicized (by feminism) may take offence at texts that are politically unacceptable or unpalatable．In the past decade a number of female translators have assumed the right that they ‘correct’ texts in the name of feminist ‘truths’ to query their source texts from the feminist perspective，to intervene and make changes when the texts depart from this perspective．” (Flotow, 2004:24)．

Though there were no radical women’s movements in China, feminism also took up a battle field in China．Since 1980s，Western feminist thoughts poured into China and exerted great influence on the literary field. Most of our country’s scholars began to study feminism, but their academic papers only focus on the study of the feminist translation theory. Although there are some scholars having paid attention to the vital factor-the gender of translators also has influence on translation, in 2002, our country’s scholars truly started to analyze the feminist translation theory all-round.

The author chooses to study feminist consciousness in Eileen Chang’s translation work from feminist translation theory due to the following reasons．In theory, feminist translation theory justifies translators’ feminist consciousness and emphasizes the equal status between the male and the female．Being an outstanding woman writer in the history of Chinese literature, Eileen Chang attracted immediate attention of the critics when she first appeared in literary circle．However, there is a surprisingly neglected field：analysis of Eileen Chang’s translations．Up till now most of the studies about the feminist translation have been the theoretical introduction of the origin, development and influence of the entire theory system in the West. This research tries to study the feminist translation in the context of China. This article intends to analyze feminist consciousness in Eileen Chang’s translation works from the perspective of feminist translation theory, and find out how translators’ feminist consciousness is expressed in her translations by using some female-favored translation strategies. In the following passage, the author will analyze in detail how the female-favored translation strategies adopted by Eileen Chang to display her feminist consciousness．

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2. Literature Review

2.1 A Review of Eileen Chang’s Personal Experience and Several Translation Works

It was Eileen Chang’s special life experience that she becomes one of the most legendary writers in female literature history. The background of her family and experience of her education are the two most important factors deeply influence her personality and led to her feminist consciousness.

Eileen Chang was born in a noble family, her grandfather Zhang Peilun, who once was an important person in the end of the Qing dynasty. And Eileen Chang got feudal patriarchal maltreat instead of father’s love from her grandfather. Her grandmother Li Juou, was the daughter of Li Hongzhang. Her father, Zhang Tingzhong ended up as an opium addict，though well educated by classical Chinese literature. Her mother is the granddaughter of Huang Yisheng. And she advocated western culture. Eileen Chang’s mother turned to be a fashionable “new female” under the influence of New Culture Movement. She longed for new lifestyle and independence from male. When Eileen Chang was four years old her mother went abroad and got rid of the bound from this unsatisfying marriage. From that moment on, Eileen Chang and her mother became more and more remote. The estranged relation with her mother made Eileen Chang always questioned human nature; it made her novel writing style indifferent and lonely. Eileen Chang proposed that female should get rid of the bound of family and female should fight for social status and rights and show their talents in every field just as what male do.

Most feminist consciousness of Eileen Chang is based on her life experience. She would not accomplish so many literary works to express her view upon women without her special childhood’s experiences．Her father and mother had great effect on her feminist consciousness. Her mother was the one to lead her to the way of feminism，and her father was the one to make her be against the patriarchal society. Also her educational experience also makes contributions to her feminist consciousness.

In 1924, she studied in the private school, and she started writing novel at the same time, when she studied traditional culture. We can see the influence of family environment from her first novel which is about family tragedy, and her second novel which is about a story of a girl killing herself after breaking up with her boyfriend fully shows her literary creativity.

In 1927, Eileen Chang returned to Shanghai with her family when she was 7 years old. Shortly after, her mother returned home, and she started to learn painting, play the piano and English with help of her mother. Eileen Chang is pretty sensitive to colors, notes and literature, she once said: “I am a strange girl, I was regarded as a genius, in addition to the development of my genius I have no aim in life. ” In 1938, Eileen Chang who grew up in the dilemma received the test of the fate again. Although she was admitted to University of London, she cannot go to the university due to the fierce war. In 1939, she entered the University of Hong Kong . In 1941, The Pacific War broke out and Hong Kong was occupied by the enemy in 1942. Eileen Chang returned to Shanghai without graduating from the university. After returning to Shanghai, she wrote drama reviews and film reviews for The Times, and also wrote articles of Chinese lives and costumes for English magazine which was published vu Germen.

The novels of Eileen Chang are full of distinctive art creativity, it is mainly expressed as the unity of the emotional appeal of old novels and the tastes of modern novels. Her works are mostly based on the upper class of Shanghai and Hong Kong, so the social contents of her works are not broad, but she develops the subject field of modern literature. Her works are based on Chinese classical novels and she also uses the psychology description skills of the western modernist in her works. It forms her special writing style. Most of Eileen Chang’s literary writings are related to females．The feminist tendency is obviously showed in Eileen Chang’s writing. Eileen Chang is both a writer and a translator, which means that she plays two roles in the writing project. Therefore, Eileen Chang shows her distinctive feminist thoughts both in writing a novel and in translating a novel.

With the development of the society, New Culture Movement in early 20th century is seen as the symbol of “father image killing” movement. From this moment on, female writers start to get the right to speak. In order to get the subjectivity position of gender and to strengthen the right to speak, female writers make use of many feminist strategies to overturn the male control. “In Eileen Chang’s literary world, besides opium and women, they have no youth and aging．They are sons of mothers and fathers of sons，but they are never husbands and they are not men． Men，in Eileen Chang’s mind，are only physical existence in decadent kingdom．In Eileen Chang’s world, mother lying on bed is the authoritative commander．This is a world without fathers”(Meng Yue＆Dai Jinghua, 2004:239). Male characters in Eileen Chang’s stories were deprived of power．Most of them are described in illness images. They are gamesters，druggies and cynics. For example，in The Rouge of North，the husband of Yindi，who is thin, paralyzed and lost his male authority．So Yindi’s son depended on her mother financially and feared her mother. Through the strategy of belittling a male image, Eileen Chang describes male in a belittling method both in their appearance and mental aspects to overturn the subjectivity position of male. Eileen Chang shows her feminist consciousness through the method of belittling to a male.

The most famous collection of Eileen Chang is called The Legend, it is the only one novel of Eileen Chang before liberation, at the same time, it represents the highest achievement of Eileen Chang’s creation. The Legend mostly shows the lives of the upper middle class in Shanghai and Hong Kong people"s life during the Anti-Japanese War, the author as if quietly tells us about the distant and moving legends in a very calm attitude. Eileen Chang writes not only pure literature but also romance novels. The golden cangue, the Rice Sprout Song was evaluated highly by other famous writers, Eighteen Springs makes readers lose themselves in it. She accepts the western education, but she is fond of Chinese novel art.

The Rouge of North is one of Eileen Chang’s novels, and she translated this novel on her own. The Rouge of North was known as “one of the most beautiful harvest in the literary world.” This novel was adapted on the basis of the original plots of The golden cangue. Chang changed some character’s names, comparatively detailed explanation of the heroine"s maiden, expanded the story of the heroine and brother-in-law, the story of heroine’s son the heroine, and leave out of her daughter"s stories, the other framework has not changed.

The Old Man and the Sea is one of Hemingway"s most famous works. It language style is of great simplicity and power, it tells the story of an old Cuban fisherman, who is always lack of luck, fighting with a giant marlin in the Gulf Stream far away from the offshore. It laid the prominent status of Hemingway in literature. And Eileen Chang translated it in 1987. What’s more, Eileen Chang has translated a large number of works, such as The Golden Cangue, The Legend of the Sleepy Hollow, The Rice-Sprout Song, The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai.

2.2 A Review of Feminist Translation Theory

Feminist translation theory discusses the influence of feminism on translation, so as to find out the historical origin between feminism and translation. Feminist translation holds the view that feminist translators can realize their theory and political thoughts throughout their translations, and it claims that feminist translators should adopt feminist discourse strategies to provide the space for themselves. Feminist translation theory usually adopts female-favored translation strategies—prefacing, footnoting, supplementing and hijacking to analyze and reveal the relationship between translation and female.

Feminist translation theory aims at discussing that feminist translation tries to explore women’s unique aesthetic value from the aspect of translation strategies, so as to realize the equal political demands between male and female. There is no doubt that considering the authors, texts, translators and readers from the perspective of feminism brings a new enlightenment to translation studies, and it overturns the master-servant relationship between original texts and translations in traditional translation. What’s more, it provides more possibilities for feminist consciousness.

Since 1980s, more and more translators have paid attention to the relationship between feminism and translation. With the advocacy of Lori Chamberlain, Sherry Simon and others, western translators started to discuss the value relationship between differences and translation on the basis of feminist discourse theory. The majority of feminist translation theory researchers are females they stated the relation between female and translation on the basis of their own gender, views and feelings. Feminist critics and translators, such as Barbara Godard, Lori Chamberlain, Sherry Simon, Susanne de Lotbiniere-Harwood and Luis von Flotow are outstanding representatives of western feminist translation theory.

Males have been the center of social economy, politics and culture for o long time, and they formed strong male-centered awareness. Most English expressions are male-centered, and those expressions can also represent females, but the opposite can’t be accepted. Moreover, these expressions which are used to represent males don’t have the meaning of insult, and it is different from that of females. For example, history (历史)，it is used as a record or narrative description of past events ,feminist translators suggested that we should use the expression “her-tory” in some fields . (Liu Junping，2010:462) Another example is “spokesman”, because males have been the center of politic, they usually represent their companies, cities and countries to express important thoughts in public, so “spokesman” is only used to represent males. With the development of economy and technology, this situation has gradually changed, sometimes females have the rights to express important thoughts in public instead of males. According to that, feminist translators hold the view that “spokes-woman” should be existed to represent those females who have the rights to express important thoughts in public.

3. Eileen Chang’s Feminist Consciousness Displayed in Her Translation Strategies

3.1 Prefacing and Footnoting

Prefacing and footnoting are “important instruments of active engagement with the source and participation in the creation of meaning” (Hatim, 2001:135). Translators usually explain the intentions of them by employing prefacing and footnoting , also they used the strategies in the special piece of translations. However, in feminist translators’ opinions，those prefaces and footnotes have an intention to develop the sense of self. On the one hand, the feminist translators always describe and reconstruct the original text in the preface and footnote in order to make readers understand the process of translating. The feminist translators also introduce the translation strategies used in the process of translation. On the other hand, feminist translators often make use of the strategy of prefacing and footnoting in the process of translating to show their feelings in the translated version to illustrate the gender and status of the translators

As far as Eileen Chang is concerned, claim her attitude toward her work of translation by prefacing and footnoting is not a main battlefield. But she still makes use of the strategy of prefacing and footnoting in her process of translation to express her feminist thoughts.

Eileen Chang uses prefacing in the translation of The Old Man and the Sea, she says“I am not interested in all kinds of dangerous activities, such as whaling and lion-hunting. What even makes myself astonished is that I like the literature work The Old Man and the Sea. This book is the one I love most in foreign books.”(Eileen Chang, 1972:2). She emphasized that the willpower was not only the superman’s，but also should belong to all human beings deliberately in her translation. Chang pointed out the truth that our civilization was male directly. In the society dominated by males, women lost their status and their civilization．Therefore，in her preface，Eileen Chang expressed her thought：to translate this novel is not only for men，the old man’s willpower should belong to both women and men. She wanted to encourage women to get this willpower. And that showed her view that women should enjoy the equal rights as men.

3.2 Supplementing

Supplementing the source text is “a strategy to which politically-conscious feminist translators would resort to in dealing with areas such as word play” (Hatim, 2001:135). It is the equivalent of what some theorists call“compensation”， because it“compensates for the differences between languages”(Simon, 1996:14). The strategy of supplementing means to supplement the linguistic differences between the original language and the target language. Supplementing is commonly used by translators, but the female translators mainly use it on the gender level. Female translators mean to awaken the realization of gender discrimination so that to make female overturn the patriarchal system through the supplementing. Female translators always express their standing point and belief in the translated text. In Eileen Chang’s translation, this strategy is adopted to handle the expressions which show the women’s identity．The following paragraphs are the examples.

The original is：

He always thought of sea as la mar which is what people call her in Spanish when they love her．Sometimes those who love her say bad things of her but they are always said as though she were a woman（Hemingway, 2001:22）.

The translations are：

他脑子里的海水永远是“海娘子”，在西班牙文里，人们爱她的时候总是这样称她。有时候爱她的人也说她的坏话，但是他们说话的口气里总好像她是一个女人（Eileen Chang, 1972:18）。

他每想到海洋，老是称她为la mar,这是人们对海洋抱着好感时用两班牙语对她的称呼。有时候，对海洋抱着好感的人们也说她的坏话，不过说起来总是拿她当女性看待的（Wu Lao, 2004:158）。

他常常把大海想成la mar,那是人们喜爱大海时用的西班牙语称呼。有时候，喜爱大海的人也说些大海的坏话，不过往往是把它当做女人来说的（Huang Yuanshen, 2007:14）。

La mar is Spanish, mar means the sea in English and la is female identity. In Eileen Chang’s translation work, she translated “la mar” into “海娘子”, but in other two translations, they didn’t translate this expression. What’s more, “娘子” means women in Chinese, here Eileen Chang supplement “la mar” to “海娘子”， and she used five “她” in this sentence.

In the Eileen Chang’s translation The Rouge of the North, she makes use of supplementing strategy to illustrate the marriage unhappiness of female in the patriarchal society:

Example:

她哥哥嫂嫂大概是从来没想到在她身上赚笔钱，一直当她是赔钱货，做二房至少不用办嫁妆（Eileen Chang, 1997:7）。

English translation:

It was true that her brother and sister-in-law had never thought of making money out of her before. She was the goods you lose money on, what they call daughters. At least concubines did not have to bring a trousseau（Eileen Chang, 1967:7）.

Male even create the cruel rule of “裹脚（foot-binding）” in order to limit female’s activity range and to make female obey the “妇德 (merits for women)” in the Chinese feudal society. It deeply hurts the body of female, and even leads to the physical disability of female.

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