Abstract
In Translating Feminism in China: Gender, Sexuality and Censorship, Zhongli Yu provides the reader with a complex picture of feminist translation practices, theories and studies by examining Chinese-language translated texts of The Second Sex and The Vagina Monologues published in China and Taiwan. In addition, French–English translations of The Second Sex and an American campus screening of the documentary film The Vagina Monologues: Stories Behind the Scenes are discussed in an effort to depict the impact of censorship on translating the female body, sexuality, prostitution and lesbianism in the English context as well as the reverse flow of knowledge production in translation. The in-depth analyses on literatures derived from the Chinese academic database China National Knowledge Infrastructure and Yu’s pedagogical experience clarify the trends and characteristics of feminist translation studies emerging in China.
The major portion of the book is devoted to examining four Chinese translations of The Second Sex and three Chinese translations of The Vagina Monologues in relation to the key concepts of gender, sexuality and censorship. Comparisons are made between different translated versions, demonstrating various strategies evident in male/female and pro-academy/pro-theatre translations: repetition, attenuation, amplification, sematic translation, omission, addition, reversion, adaptation, localizing, literal translation, bilingual translation, transliteration, and zero translation. The last four strategies are thought to be used exclusively by male translators, which shows how female translators integrate their lived experiences, as well as their efforts to contextualize erotic elements and delete non-relevant contents for Chinese audiences. Relevance, not accuracy, is considered a priority, in particular in the translation of The Vagina Monologues. Implicit in Yu’s comprehensive analyses of translation strategies is the application of feminist intervention strategies. Ai Xiaoming and her students’ localizing The Vagina Monologues in translating for theatre demonstrates an approach to make ‘the text suit the tastes and habits of the target culture while maintaining some form of equivalence between the source and target texts’ (p. 186).
In order to achieve the theatrical effect of the source text, more translation strategies are applied to The Vagina Monologues for the benefit of the audience. The nature of The Second Sex as an academically recognized classic text, and the recognition of its author’s rhetorical identity in China as Jean-Paul Sartre’s ‘wife’ instead of ‘partner’, make The Second Sex translation less restrained or less censored/self-censored.
Both The Second Sex and The Vagina Monologues have been censored or self-censored. The only exception is the 1986 Taiwanese version of The Second Sex – notwithstanding different versions spanning 15 years. This reflects a biased social attitude and institutional policing of the female body, sexuality, prostitution, and lesbianism. As the book points out, female translators, rather than male translators, conduct harsher self-censorship on sexual texts. By carefully arguing the female/male translator divide in the scrutiny of feminist translation, the author questions queer theories which may have gone too far in generalizing female experiences. Theoretically, queer theory is an advanced tool for examining the current power structure and the epistemology behind the reading of texts. However, in a gender-biased Chinese context, the distinction between female and male translators does throw significant light on translation practices. This is mainly due to male translators’ lack of understanding of female experiences.
This well-written book provides reflexive resources for translators in general, and for scholars engaged in the fields of feminism, linguistic studies, translation studies, and state–society–individual relationships in particular. The book also sheds some light on future feminist translation studies, including French–English–Chinese translation comparisons of The Second Sex, Chinese–English translation of feminist creativities, and translation carried out by translators of different gender identity.