Translation and women's identities : a case study of indigenous women translators in early twentieth-century China = 翻譯與女性 : 二十世紀初葉中國本土女性譯者的「新女性」身份構造

Abstract

Historical and archival research in recent years has questioned the term “women” as a consistent category of identity throughout history, which has given rise to more nuanced discussions on a host of issues related to women. During the New Culture Movement in the early twentieth century, the emergence of translated literary works by female translators contributed to the construction and interpretation of women’s identity in China, in comparison with gender discourse in traditional China. Among them, Xue Qiying, Wu Ruonan and Shen Xingren were three understudied female translators, whose works appeared in the influential journal La Jeunesse and invite fruitful analysis from the perspective of feminist identity construction. This study focuses on translation works during the time period from the New Culture Movement to 1930 by Xue, Wu and Shen; and, delves into the construction of the identity of “women” as part and parcel of postcolonial modernity and the roles played by translation in this process.

This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One introduced research paradigms in the area of translation studies, and narrowed down this translation research under the analytic perspective of gender discourse. Chapter Two detailed the issue of women’s identities during the historical upheaval from premodern China to modern China. Chapter Three and Chapter Four specifically approached historical archives relating to Xue Qiying, Wu Ruonan and Shen Xingren, in which Chapter Three pinned down this research to the journal La Jeunesse and Chapter Four extended archive ranges to these three indigenous women translators’ separate translation development. The final conclusion chapter summarised the representativeness of “New Woman” identities constructed by Xue, Wu and Shen, contributing to a comprehensively comparative conversation between women individuals and the historical framework.