优秀学期论文

Introduction

Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist, wrote in her book The First Sex that “Modern women are slowly cutting out a new economy and social prospect like glaciers and building a new world”. And feminist translation is the sharp tip of the iceberg to cut out a new world. The emergence of feminist translation ushered in a new era of translation studies, where translators for the first time related women to translation as both of them were 'relegated to the bottom of the social and literary ladder' (Simon, 1996:p.1). With the development of the Canada-centric feminist translation, its criticism inevitably sprouted in the 1980s. Feminist translation criticism not only serves as a driving force for interdisciplinary translation studies but also for the advancement of modern feminism. Resembling feminist translation, its criticism practice is aimed at getting to the roots of women's subordinate status and fighting patriarchal language and culture through inspection of both authors and translators. If feminist translators can 'make the feminine visible in language', then so do feminist critics (Gauvin, 1989:p.9).

Admittedly, remarkable achievements of improving women's status concerning political participation (voting), education, and employment had been made in the Three Waves of Feminism in the past two centuries. Nevertheless, the deep-rooted patriarchal culture still viciously lurks in the modern society, always being ready to silence women who attempt to challenge patriarchy, through utilizing misogynistic language, harassment, violence (rape especially), or even death as intimidation; and women thereupon become Cassandra[1], who gets punished and is never to be believed on account of her disputing the male authority. In other words, physical violence and structural violence against women remain significant and pressing problems to be addressed. Therefore, I chose this collection of essays Men Explain Things to Me written by Rebecca Solnit as my analysis object, which highlights women's subordination caused by the aforementioned violence, and advocates that women should have their say and be heard in every aspect of the society. It is worth mentioning that after Solnit published her essay of the same title as “Men explain Things to Me” on Tomdispatch, hundreds of women share their experiences of being patronized by men online, and soon the word “Mansplaining” (男式说教) was coined, which was one of the New York Times’ words of the year for 2010.

Given that the number of feminist translation criticism studies is relatively limited compared to other realms like literary translation criticism, this paper will analyze and critique the translation of two selected chapters in Men Explain Things to Me from the feminism perspective based on Yuan Limei's, Yu Jianxiang's, Chen Limei's, and Liao Qiyi's studies on literary and feminist translation criticism, revealing how deleterious women-targeted violence is. Additionally, suggestions for translation improvement will be offered based on the feminist translation strategies proposed by Luise von Flotow.