西方翻译史概括.doc

Translation and Gender Historical Background The womens Movement and the Idea of Gender Simon de Beauvoir wrote in 1949on ne nait pas femme, on le devient. E.M.Parshley translated this in 1953 as one is not born, but rather becomes a woman. Beauvoir suggests that a girlbaby is turned into a woman by the society she grows up in and in response to the expectations that society has of women. The final product woman is a result of education and conditioning, and differs according to the dominant influences she is subject to in the culture. Gender refers to the sociocultural construction of both sexes. Feminist thinkers of the late 1960s and early 1970s developed the term in the interests of examining and understanding womens socialized difference from men, and their comitant cultural and political powerlessness. Women and Language Many feminists think that language is not only a tool for communication but also a manipulative tool. Two different approaches to questions about women and language: The reformormist approach: view conventional language as a symptom of the society that spawned it. The radical approach: view conventional language as an important cause of womens oppression, the medium through which women were taught and came to know their subordinate place in the world. (Cameron 1985) The womens movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s focused on two aspects of womens difference: First, it tried to show how womens difference from men was in many ways due to the artificial behavioural stereotypes that come with gender conditioning. Second, the movement de-emphasized differences between women, stressing instead shared experiences, their commonality, their solidarity. Gender and the Practice of Translation Gender awareness in translation practice poses questions about the links between social stereotypes and linguistic forms, about the politics of language and cultural difference, about the ethics of translation, and about reviving inaccessible works for co