基于女性主义视角的张爱玲翻译观探究

of the most famous aficionado of The Sing-song Girls ofShanghai. She first translated it into standard Mandarin version which was publishedby Crown in 1981 and then two chapters of her English translation were published inRenditions (1982). Considering the novel’s relatively special subject, it is a good casefor feminist study. However, according to the record of CNKI from 1988 to 2012,there are 180 theses and journal articles on Hai Shang Hua Lie Zhuan (The Sing-songGirls of Shanghai), among which only 18 are about its translation. This is the secondsignificance of this study.The main objective of the study is to try to make a systematic probe into EileenChang’s translation thoughts from the perspective of feminism, on the basis of which,the study also tries to explore if Chang’s unique thoughts can give someenlightenments to the traditional western feminist translation thoughts as well as thedevelopment of feminism in modern times in turn.

Chapter One Literature Review

1.1 A Brief Review of Eileen Chang

In 1920, Eileen Chang was born into a very distinguished family with ZhangYing as her birth name. Her paternal grandmother is the eldest daughter of LiHongzhang, an influential court official during the Qing Dynasty. When she was onlythree years old, her mother left to study in the United Kingdom since she could notendure her father taking in a concubine and becoming addicted to opium. Her parentsdivorced in 1930 and Chang and her younger brother were raised by her father.At the age of 10, Chang’s mother renamed her Ailing, a transliteration of Eileen,in preparation for her entrance to an English school, Saint Maria Girls' School, whereshe not only acquired excellent bilingual capabilities, but also read a lot of classicalliterature, including Dream of the Red Chamber, one of the Four Great ClassicalNovels of Chinese Literature, which would influence her work throughout her career.Also in Saint Maria, Chang already displayed great literary talent and her writingswere published in the school magazine.In 1939, Chang was to attend the University of London on a full scholarship, butfailed due to the outbreak of World War Two. Instead, she studied English literature atthe University of Hong Kong. At that time, Lin Yutang’s two works written in English,My Country and My People and The Importance of Living became best sellers in theUnited States, which helped Lin win an international fame. In one of her autographicessay named Whispered Words, Chang said that she aimed to even do better than Linone day3. (Eileen Chang, 2008:135) Thus she studied very hard in the University ofHong Kong, reading a large number of original English novels and keeping writing inEnglish. This experience further improved her English skill.When Hong Kong fell to the Empire of Japan in 1941, Chang returned back tomainland China and soon became the most popular new writer in Shanghai. Some ofher most acclaimed works including Qing Cheng Zhi Lian and Jin Suo Ji were writtenin this period.

1.2 Studies on Eileen Chang’s translations

Eileen Chang’s translation career formally began in 1952 when she translatedErnest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. The following is a list of hertranslated works from then:translation thoughts and aesthetic pursuit.These years there are also studies on Eileen Chang’s translation from theperspective of Feminist translation. In “On Eileen Chang’s Feminist TranslationPoetics in translating ‘The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai’”, Wang Xiaoying concludesthe similarities and differences between Feminist translation theory and EileenChang’s translation strategies; (Wang Xiaoying, 2012:459-472) In “On EileenChang’s Native Strategies in Her Feminist Translation Poetics” coauthored by ChenJirong and Zhang Xiaopeng, they point out that unlike the extreme woman-handlingtheory