论文总字数：36991字
摘 要
美国华裔作家邝丽莎的Snow Flower and the Secret Fan一书自2005年出版以来受到人们的广泛好评，销量过100万册，其成功主要在于对封建时代中国男权文化摧残、压制女性的描写和对命运跌宕起伏下人物经历、生活状态的刻画。书内涉及大量细腻委婉的女性心理描写以及诸如女书、缠足、老同等女性特有的文化，如何再现这些细节是翻译的重点。
本文对原著及2006年忻元洁翻译的《雪花和秘密的扇子》进行对比研究，发现女性作者和女性译者之间有一种互惠互利但偶尔脆弱的关系。鉴于作者和译者性别相同，观点一致，以性别视角来探索Snow Flower and the Secret Fan一书的翻译是很有必要的。
关键词：性别；翻译；《雪花和秘密的扇子》
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements i
English Abstract ii
Chinese Abstract iii
Table of Contents iv
Chapter one Introduction 1
1.1 Research questions...........................................................................................1
1.2 Research purpose..............................................................................................1
Chapter Two Gender and Translation........................................................................3
2.1 Background of Feminist Movement 3
2.1.1 The First Period ..3
2.1.2 The Second Period 3
2.2 Contentamp; Form of Women Writers' Works 4
2.3 Feminist Translation Practiceamp; Theory..........................................................5
2.4 Literature Review...........................................................................................5
Chapter Three Lisa See as a Feminist Writer 7
3.1 Selection of Theme 7
3.2 Privatization...................................................................................................8
3.2.1 Particular Place and Character.................................................................9
3.2.2 Female Body Writing..............................................................................9
Chapter Four Xin Yuanjie as a Feminist Translator..............................................11
4.1 Choice of Text..............................................................................................11
4.2 Transformance and Combination.................................................................12
4.3 Reader Awareness.........................................................................................14
4.4 Collaboration................................................................................................14
Chapter Five Conclusion...........................................................................................17
References 19
Chapter One Introduction
Chinese American women writers, especially Lisa See, leave a lasting imprint on contemporary American literature world. Being a female writer, See concerns about female survival situations and how to strive for woman’s rights, showing strong feminist consciousness in her works, represented On Gold Mountain (《在金山上》)， Peony in Love (《恋爱中的牡丹》)，Shanghai Girls (《上海女孩》) and Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (《雪花与秘密的扇子》). As a very typical one, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a great hit. Cosmopolitan(2006) evaluated the book as “Startling vivid... Punishing customs, such as foot-binding, and unbreakable female bonds are brought to life in enchanting detail. So gorgeous it hurts.” Also, what attracts the readers most is the beautiful, real and secret world that See unfolds in front of the audience.
Feminist translation theory aims to identify and critique the tangle of concepts which relegates both women and translations to the bottom of the social literary ladder(Sherry Simon 2001). Composing from female insight and vision, female writers convey certain type of sensitive female psychology through various techniques of writing. Since the book centers around the unique theme of lifelong female friendship and sufferings, translators need to take gender positions when it comes to the translation theory.
1.1 Research questions
The article tries to solve mainly two problems. First, why is gender so important a matter in the translation of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan? Second, what writing techniques and translation strategies do female writers and translators separately take in the books?
1.2 Research purpose
Feminist translation theories have overthrown the traditional translation views, bringing formidable stroke to the contemporary translation theory. At the same time, it greatly impacts the practical field. However, the over-diversified feminist schools also bring about extreme ideas which deviate, even distort from the essence of translation in a way. Hence, it becomes momentous for the translators to achieve the emancipation of woman’s gender consciousness and avoid the unnecessary, interfering exaggeration simultaneously. As a result, the author exemplifies some segments from See and Xin Yuanjie’s works and try to touch off people’s attention on the issue.
Chapter Two Gender and Translation
2.1 Background of Feminist Movement
Feminist movement touches upon almost every aspect, in general, it deals with the problem of feminist practice and theory(Wu Xiaojie 2000). The practice is “the subordinated women emancipate themselves from patriarchy culture and regulation through struggles with the aim to get equal rights as men in politics, economy and social life.” The theory is “devote to the explanation of the origin, result and solution of gender divisions and imparity; endeavor to apply social, cultural transformation to bring profound changes to sex relation”.
2.1.1 The First Period
Feminist movement, also named woman’s liberation movement, has its early products during late 19th century. At that time, the argument focuses on the battle of the sexes, asking for equality between sexes. What’s more, it demands for civil right and political rights, fighting against the privileges of the nobility, stressing that no intellectual distinction exists between men and women. Then, with the rise of culture—rationalism flourishes after the enlightenment movement—factory system sets up everywhere. Meanwhile, capitalism propagates that human beings are born equal, which assists in the existence of sexual equality theoretically. Under the circumstance, women establish certain economic infrastructure and progressively take part in social and economic life. On the other hand, women fail to achieve an equal and balanced standing in social reality, thus social prejudice on women remains to be serious. One important thing to mention is that the political and economic development does not increase the status of women remarkably and forcefully, women have to yield to men in the whole social environment. It is conceivable that feminists feel dissatisfied.
2.1.2 The Second Period
Generally speaking, the second feminist movement starts at 1960s and the United States is known as the origin. The campaign, with the keynote of eliminating dissimilarities between both sexes, lasts until 1980s and involves two main points: 1) Considering the difference between sexes as the basis of women being attached to men. 2) Demanding all fields to be available to the public.
Another result brought about by the second feminist movement is the study of sex. Along with the blossom of academic feminism researches, feminist genres of all forms emerge at the same time. For a long time, male-dominated ideology prevails in the society. Traditional concepts belittle the role of women in the society, restricting women to live within the standard of conduct operated by patriarchal society(Du Yanchun 2007). During the period, feminists call out a challenge on the accustomed ideas. Though coming from different genres, feminists hold the basic point of striving for sex equality and altering the current situation in which women are discriminated and oppressed.
2.2 Content and Form of Women Writers’ Works
Even in the 16th and 17th century when poetry and drama are booming, women endure “aphasia” that they are unable to fulfill the wish to write. Virginia Woolf(Qu Shijing 2000) once mentioned that, “women to be writers—are not welcomed, on the contrary, they bear disesteem, strike, rebuke and persuasion.” By the 19th century, with the help of the feminist movement, women improve their living standards and start to receive high education as well as compose best-sellers.
Humble status, poverty-striken life and constrained feeling give birth to the traitorous, acute figures in female writers’ books. In the patriarchal society, women are limited in creation, locked at home and confined in physical and mental development. Such circumstances drive feminist writers to commit the accumulative inhibition, unfairness to paper and rebel against male-dominated theory. These writings express the underlying psychological feeling of female, deconstruct the obsolete sexual relationships and contribute to shape “new women” who resist to overturn traditional roles and achieve spiritual independence, setting distinctive patterns to write female literature of their own.
Different social status in a sense effects language performance. Unlike men, women are exquisite and rich in feeling. In addition, women lay particular emphasis on imaginative thinking and have beautiful manners. Unsurprisingly, women would like to choose words with affection such as “loveliness”, “likable” to express their feelings. Besides, women prefer to use overstated adjectives exemplified by “gorgeous”, “adorable”, “charming”, “lovely”(Huo Yanjin 2013). And to underline focal points, female often use adverbs and exaggerated parts like “so”, “pretty”, “nice”, “quite”, “perfectly”.
2.3 Feminist Translation Practice and Theory
Feminist translators prefer to choose feminist avant-garde novels, politically incorrect works and the forgotten female writers’ works as materials, then add foreword or footnote in the translated version, which reflects the influence of feminism on translation practice(Li Hongyu 2005).
Simon(1996) thinks that feminist translators pay more attention to the function of action instead of behavior in language. What the feminist translation tries to pursue is not language equivalence but how action-motivated language transmits in other culture, in other language. In this way, female translators cooperate with writers and the two groups are intimate.
Since another important aspect of feminist translation is to make the subject of translation, that is women, become visible, the idea of translators’ subjectivity is attached importance to. The theory requires women to find back words and voices of their own through the practice of translation, rewriting women body and experience. Such theory endows translation the power of change, providing women with space to walk away from the shadows of patriarchal language. Thus all female, especially female translators need to leave footprints during the process of translation.
1.3 Literature review
Western countries originally combine gender with translation and great progress is made in the filed. During the 1990s, Sherry Simon(1996) anticipates that translation bears the function of enabling women to speak, establish the status as main body and participate in political issues, also she proposes to probe into the matter of uniting gender, translation with cultural studies based on Spivak theory. Luisevon Flowtow(1997) considers translation as a tool to “represent” the missing works in the patriarchal society, and further develops research on translation theory centered female translators. Afterwards, western feminist translators put these ideas into effect and utilize such feminist translation theories as augment, commentary and hijacking(Gora Gisbertamp; Jose Santaemilia, 2003).
After 2002, domestic scholars set out to look into western feminist translation and make many reviews containing the nature and strategies of feminist translation as well as translator subjectivity on a feminist scale(Li Hongyu, 2007), which present a rather comprehensive hologram. However, the translation researches at home from the perspective of gender still stay at the commentary, combing level since it starts late and lacks deep investigation. Besides, the research focus up to now is put on female translator alone, thus neglecting the inter-reaction of translators and writers.
Chapter Three Lisa See as a Feminist Writer
In the literatary world, women exemplified by Lisa See indite feminist works, laying the foundation of their fame as creative writers. Lisa See, a productive female writer grapples with themes such as life-long “sisterhood” under the influence of male-dominated culture, especially in her well-known book Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. Restriced by social doctrines, women used to have only one goal—get a husband and reproduce a nuclear family. See changes the situation in her book and calls on “we, the women become experts on our own experience and no one else is” to the public. The following points expose her efforts to change the way how people think of women and how women think of themselves.
3.1 Selection of Theme
Personalized feminine writing possesses one distinct characteristic, that is, write from a small angle and write what is close to life. Comparatively speaking, male writers are accustomed to improve their creative experience from macroscopic aspect whilst female writers tend to lead literature to the microcosm(Yang Chunyan 2004). Woman writers disregard magnificent narratives and avoid social major themes but choose to cut into society through the depiction of “family affections and household trifles.” For See, she determines to describe the “sisterhood” between Lily and Snow Flower to reflect social phenomena.
I：But Snow Flower and I were laotong, which was a marriage of emotions strong enough to cross over great distances and long separations. Our bond was supposed to be more important than marriage to a man. We had pledged to be true and faithful until death parted us.(290)
Analysis: Abiding by the local custom, women can be engaged with each other as laotong or sworn sisterhood. A laotong relationship is completely different from sworn sisterhood, it involves two girls from different villages and lasts their entire lives while a sworn sisterhood is made up of several girls and dissolves at marriage. Being a pair of laotong, juvenile Lily and Snow Flower live together for a long time and learn the good qualities from each other. During the transient simple and happy time, solid friendship is established between them.
II: Why couldn’t she try to be a better wife? Why couldn’t she make her husband happy in the ways I knew she could? Why didn’t she pinch her checks to bring back the color? Why didn’t she eat more so she would have more energy? Why couldn’t she go home right now and kowtow to her mother-in-law, make her meals, sew for her, sing to her, do what she had to do to make that old woman happy in her old age? Why didn’t she try harder to make things right?(288)
Analysis: After marriage, there is some misunderstanding between the two because of different social status. Thanks to the smallest feet in the town(the result of footbinding), Lily marries into the Lu clan and improves her standing. She realizes that only by following the rules set by society can women get the reward, so she looks after her husband, mother-in-law and father-in-law well, finally, she becomes the women enjoying the highest status in the county. She is successful but her soul is also eroded by the male chauvinist. She not only demands herself to follow Three Obediences and Four Virtues, but also forces Snow Flower to do so from a male angle, simply neglecting Snow Flower’s unfortunate experience as well as the miserable matrimony. Even the outsider, Plum Blossom, criticized her that “you had too much man-thinking in you, you loved her as a man would, valuing her only for following men’s rules.”
III: I would have many years to consider those lines and do what I could to change all the harm I had caused to the person I loved most in the world.(322)
Analysis:At the time when Snow Flower is terribly ill and about to die, Lily eventually realizes her mistake, her misunderstanding about Snow Flower but it is too late to apologize. Owing to her high status, her vituperation has already caused indelible harm to Snow Flower. In summary, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan exposes that the oppression and unfairness under the male-dominated society is the cause which leads to the tragedy of Snow Flower and Lily.
3.2 Privatization
See conscientiously transmits the “gender consciousness” towards “discourse consciousness”, which ensures that female consciousness is displayed more demonstrably. Owing to this, “female narration” that against the traditional “male experience” comes into existence in her book.
3.2.1. Particular Place and Character
IV: Except for three terrible months in the fifth year of Emperor Xianfeng’s reign, I have spent my life in upstairs woman’s rooms.(3)
V：Aunt instructed me on the special rules that govern nv shu. It can be used to write letters, songs, autobiographies, lessons on womanly duties, prayer to the goddess, and, of course, popular stories. It can be written with brush and ink on paper or on a fan; it can be embroidered onto handkerchief or woven into clothes. It can and should be sung before an audience of other women and girls, but it can also be something that is read and treasured alone. But the two most important rules are these: Men must never know that it exists, and men must not touch it in any form.(30)
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