Gender in Literary Translation - A Corpus-Based Study of The English Translations of Chenzhong de Chibang (PDFDrive)

Corpora and Intercultural Studies 3
Lingzi Meng
Gender in Literary
Translation
A Corpus-Based Study of the English
Translations of Chenzhong De Chibang
Corpora and Intercultural Studies
Volume 3
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Lingzi Meng
Gender in Literary
Translation
A Corpus-Based Study of the English
Translations of Chenzhong De Chibang
123
Lingzi Meng
School of Foreign Languages
East China Normal University
Shanghai, China
ISSN 2510-4802 ISSN 2510-4810 (electronic)

Corpora and Intercultural Studies
ISBN 978-981-13-3719-2 ISBN 978-981-13-3720-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3720-8
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Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Gender and Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Gender and Translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3 Objectives of the Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.4 Significance of the Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.5 Organization of the Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2 Literature Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.1 Gender and Translation Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.1.1 First Paradigm of Gender and Translation Studies . . . . . . . 10
2.1.2 Second Paradigm of Gender and Translation Studies . . . . . 19
2.1.3 Third Wave Feminist Translation Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.2 Studies on Chenzhong de Chibang and Its Translations . . . . . . . . 25
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3 Theoretical Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3.1 Post-structuralist Theorization of Language and Subjectivity . . . . . 29
3.1.1 Theorizing Language and Subjectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
3.1.2 Discourse and Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.2 Theorizing Gender From Post-structuralist Perspective . . . . . . . . . 35
3.2.1 Theorizing Gender . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3.2.2 Gender and Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3.2.3 Gender and Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3.3 Critical Discourse Analysis as Analytic Framework . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.3.1 Why CDA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.3.2 Tenets of CDA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.3.3 Stages of Critical Discourse Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
v
vi Contents
4 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4.1 Methodological Basis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4.1.1 Macroscopic and Microscopic Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4.1.2 Corpus as Practical Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
4.2 Data Collection and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
4.2.1 Overview of the Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
4.2.2 Selection of Texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
4.2.3 The Compilation of the Corpus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
4.2.4 Selecting Linguistic Features and Spotting Gendered
Discourses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..... 61
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..... 66
5 Results and Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
5.1 Language Use in the Two Translations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
5.1.1 Corpus Statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
5.1.2 Modality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
5.1.3 Transitivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
5.1.4 Pragmatic Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
5.2 Gender Representation in the Two Translations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
5.2.1 Translator’s Mediation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
5.2.2 Translation of “人” or “人类” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
5.2.3 Translation of Gendered Discourses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
5.3 Discourse Constitutive of Translators’ Gender Performance . . . . . . 120
5.3.1 Discourses Constitutive of Translators’ Different Gender
Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
5.3.2 Discourse Constitutive of Translators’ Similar Gender
Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
6.1 Major Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
6.2 Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
6.3 Limitations and Suggestions for Future Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Appendix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
List of Figures
Fig. 3.1 Three-dimensional conception of discourse

(Fairclough 1992: 73) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Fig. 5.1 Distribution of omission in Yang’s translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Fig. 5.2 Distribution of omission in Goldblatt’s translation . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
vii
List of Tables
Table 4.1 Size of the parallel corpus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

Table 5.1 Corpus statistics of the two translations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Table 5.2 Modal auxiliaries used in the two translations . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Table 5.3 Major meanings of the English modal verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Table 5.4 Usage of modal auxiliaries in Yang’s translation . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Table 5.5 Sources of the auxiliaries used in Yang’s translation . . . . . . . . 77
Table 5.6 Usage of modal auxiliaries in Goldblatt’s translation . . . . . . . . 79
Table 5.7 Sources of the auxiliaries used in Goldblatt’s translation . . . . . 81
Table 5.8 Correspondent source language structures of THERE + BE
structure in Yang’s translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 84
Table 5.9 Correspondent source language structures of passive form
BE + V-en in Yang’s translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 85
Table 5.10 Correspondence of THERE + BE structure in Goldblatt’s
translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 86
Table 5.11 Correspondence of passive form BE + V-en in Goldblatt’s
translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Table 5.12 Emphasizers applied in Yang’s translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Table 5.13 Function of the emphasizers applied in Yang’s translation . . . . 92
Table 5.14 Amplifiers applied in Yang’s translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Table 5.15 Function of the amplifiers applied in Yang’s translation . . . . . 92
Table 5.16 Downtoners applied in Yang’s translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Table 5.17 Function of the downtoners applied in Yang’s translation . . . . 93
Table 5.18 Emphasizers applied in Goldblatt’s translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Table 5.19 Function of the emphasizers applied in Goldblatt’s
translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 94
Table 5.20 Amplifiers applied in Goldblatt’s translation . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 95
Table 5.21 Function of the amplifiers applied in Goldblatt’s
translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 95
ix
x List of Tables
Table 5.22 Downtoners applied in Goldblatt’s translation . . . . . . ....... 96

Table 5.23 Function of the downtoners applied in Goldblatt’s
translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....... 96
Table 5.24 Proportion of pragmatic means to modify
emotional/unemotional words in two translations . . . . ....... 97
Table 5.25 Variability of the pragmatic force or degree . . . . . . . . ....... 98
Abstract
Gender issues have become entangled with language issues as the result of
women’s movement. Since the 1990s with the impact of post-structuralism on
gender studies, newer understanding of gender as contextually varying performance
and as a multiple and fluctuating identity that is continually being constructed in
context has largely shaken the essentialist notion of gender. Consequently, research
focus has been shifted to the discoursal representations or constructions of women
and men in particular gendered ways in talk or written texts in a given context.
Within the field of translation, which has long been recognized as implicated in
power relation and ideological struggles, gender and translation studies have become
an independent field of interdisciplinary enquiry, integral of feminism in general.
Prompted by the “second wave” of Women’s Liberation Movement, discussion of
gender and translation at its earlier phase of development was largely based on a
radical and essentialist understanding of the female identity and patriarchy.
However, with the coming of the “third wave” which takes a post-structuralist
perspective upon gender and language, feminist translation studies developed during
the “second wave” are challenged and undermined. Research that focuses on the
discursive and contingent aspect of gender starts to emerge at the crossroad of the
disciplines of translation studies and language and gender studies.
The aim of the present study is to explore gender construction and representation in
literary translation from the perspective of the post-structuralist discursive concep-
tualizations of gender and language. Adopting the analytic framework of CDA, we
conduct a corpus-based case study of the English translations of the Chinese novel
Chenzhong De Chibang by one male and one female translator. Firstly, potentially
important linguistic features in the target texts that may be gendered/gendering are
analyzed with the assistance of corpus and mapped onto the source text. These features
include the statistics generated from the corpus such as TTR, mean sentence length,
lexical density, modality, transitivity, and pragmatic features. Then, translator’s
mediation in terms of the naming of characters, translational omission, and prefacing
and footnoting and translations of the gendered discourses identified from the source
text are analyzed to reveal the translators’ explicit voice which results in semantic
alteration. Finally, the results of text analysis are interpreted and explained as gender is
xi
xii Abstract
theorized as contextualized performance through language and discourse is social

practice so that individual’s language use is both determinative of their gender sub-
jectivity and determined by institutional and social structures within which power
struggle is involved.
The study finds that (1) though the man and woman translators construct their
gender identity in significantly different ways through translation, they can conduct
same or similar gendered linguistic performance in some aspects because of the
particular institutional restraints involved in translation activity; (2) contradictory
gender discourses can exist parallel in a single text, representing the flexibility of
gender subjectivity of an individual; and (3) gender construction in the particular
context of translation is subject to the specific discourses within the institution of
translation as well as the power struggles in the wider social context.
It indicates that in the situational process of translation, both male and female
translator’s constructions of gender identity are likely to be unconscious for a
considerable part because of the immediate task of cross-lingual meaning transfer.
Meanwhile, the study also suggests that despite the efforts of generations of fem-
inists in making intervention in every social aspect, language being a significant
one, feminism as a political movement directed at changing the power relations
between men and women, and further the structure of society, has not yet achieved
the success as it aims for.
Chapter 1
Introduction
1.1 Gender and Language
The fact that “gender is an omni-relevant category in most social practices” (Lazar
2005: 3) lies at the very core of both gender and language studies as well as gender
and translation studies. Gender issues have become entangled with language issues
as the result of women’s movement in the west, especially since the 1960s when
groups of feminists began to question linguistic sexism and other forms of “patri-
archal language” that are hard to perceive in operation.
While women’s movement affected almost every aspect of the society, it was the
second wave of women’s movement that heralded an important feminist impetus to
gender and language studies. From the late 1960s, language has become a particular
feature of women’s movement as well as its target, and it was at this time that
gender and language studies as a legitimate area of academic enquiry witnessed its
initial development. Different approaches to the mutual relationship between gender
and language came into existence one after another, evoking debates and promoting
the research area. Till the end of last century, influential and major models that most
gender and language studies adopted include the “deficit” approach (e.g. Lakoff
1975), the “dominance” approach (e.g. Spender 1980), and the “difference”
approach (e.g. Coates 1993; Tannen 1991). The “deficit” gender and language
model argues that women are disadvantaged as language users and they present
themselves as uncertain and lacking in authority. In the “dominance” framework,
the language patterns of male and female users are interpreted as manifestations of
patriarchal social order, and the asymmetries in the language use of women and
men are viewed as enacting male privilege. The “difference” model, based on a
“two cultures” account of male and female socialization, is offered as an alternative
to the dominance model as an explanation for patterns of female and male language
use and for the misunderstanding between women and men. Behind these retro-
spectively named approaches lies the driving force of different phases of feminism,
as Cameron observes:
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 1

L. Meng, Gender in Literary Translation, Corpora and Intercultural Studies 3,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3720-8_1
2 1 Introduction
Both dominance and difference represented particular moments in feminism: dominance

was the moment of feminist outrage, of bearing witness to oppression in all aspects of
women’s lives, while difference was the moment of feminist celebration, reclaiming and
revaluing women’s distinctive cultural traditions. (Cameron 1995: 39)
Despite the fact that the past tense in Cameron’s above remarks has already sug-
gested changing of research models within, at least, the field of gender and language
studies, there is still some research conducted in the dominance as well as, and
perhaps especially, the difference framework. While the difference model has
gained popularity in the wider culture, spawning numerous relationship self-help
books and newspaper articles about linguistic gender differences (Talbot 1998: 132;
Baker 2014: 3), within academia, there are still arguments that linguistic differences
do exist (Locke 2011).
In spite of the ongoing arguments, since the 1990s, most researchers engaged in
gender and language studies have come to recognize the trouble with doing research
with either the dominance or the difference model. While the monolithic and
decontextualized perception of patriarchy under the dominance framework is
refuted and viewed as “less than useless” (Talbot 1998: 134), the problems with the
framework of difference are the “neglect of power” (ibid: 136) and the reinforce-
ment of stereotypes as a consequence of a preoccupation with difference. Another
problem with both the dominance and difference models, which is considered more
fundamental, is the conceptualization of gender as binary opposition that shores up
essentialism. That is to say, gender identities are regarded as static, fixed once for
all in one’s childhood, when the interplay among language, individual’s identities
and social structure and how the interaction sustains unequal gender relations are
not properly attended to. The easy dichotomy of masculinity and femininity
engendered in gender-differences research is thus problematized, in line with the apt
remarks from Cameron, “gender is a problem, not a solution. ‘Men do this, women
do that’ is not only overgeneralized and stereotypical, it fails utterly to address the
question of where ‘men’ and ‘women’ come from” (Cameron 1995: 42).
In order to conceptualize gender without the polarization and opposition entailed
in essentialism, an alternative framework is developed and argued for. This
framework addresses how language functions as the link between the individual and
social structures. The newly-developed perspective is the result of the impact from
post-structuralism on gender studies and takes a discourse approach to the study of
gender and language. With its emphasis on the constitutive nature of discourse,
post-structuralism has re-shaped the conceptualizations of gender and language.
New understanding of gender as contextually varying performance and as a mul-
tiple and fluctuating identity that is continually being constructed in context has
largely shaken the essentialist notion of gender. Language, from the
post-structuralist perspective, is viewed as “the place where actual and possible
forms of social organization and their likely social and political consequences are
defined and contested. Yet it is also the place where our sense of selves, our
subjectivity is constructed” (Weedon 1997: 21). New approach to gender and
language studies has thus been developed, which emphasizes the constitutive
function of language, or more exactly, of discourse, and rejects the “reflective” or
1.1 Gender and Language 3
“expressive” models of language. This approach focuses on the discoursal repre-

sentations or constructions of women and men in particular gendered ways in talk
or written texts in a given context, while these ways could be either conservative or
progressive, normative or idiosyncratic. The notion that identity and subjectivity is
effect of discourse, which is therefore in flux, marks a shift away from common-
sensical gender categorization and it is a denial of the obvious, that women and men
are unquestionable categories applies to people and they are different.
1.2 Gender and Translation
The understanding of translation as deeply implicated in power relation and ide-

ology has been acknowledged over the past decades. Among all the possible power
tensions and ideological frames that translation is subjected to and that conse-
quently determine the way how a translated text represents the original text, gender
imbalance is arguably one of the most insidious. This is because gender relation is
pervasive and its naturalization is usually taken for granted (Eckert 1989: 253, 254).
The enquiry of gender and translation studies, which is also prompted by the
“second wave” of women’s movement, is part of feminism in general and can be
viewed partly as integral of feminist gender and language studies program in spe-
cific. And the developing understanding from the reflective model of language to
the constitutive model of discourse also means shift in approaches to gender and
translation studies.
Earliest discussion of gender and translation was triggered during the “second
wave” feminism by the radical literary practices that were conducted to remedy
patriarchal language. The general purposes of the feminist writers as well as the
feminist translators included emancipating women from patriarchal oppression in
language and representing their specificity through a full-scale renovation of lan-
guage, and to “identify and critique the tangle of concepts which relegates both
women and translation to the bottom of the social and literary ladder” (Simon 1996:
1). To achieve these goals, feminist translators and critics explored many directions
that were of crucial import to the feminist campaign in the field of translation.
Those directions ranged from issues in translation practice, to translation history
and criticism, and to new ideas in translation theory. In translation practice, feminist
translators performed linguistic innovation to translate experimental feminist writ-
ings, and queried source texts from a feminist perspective to intervene and make
changes to them. For translation history and criticism, feminists recovered and
made available the creative works of some earlier women writers and woman
translators that have been ignored in patriarchy, critiqued and re-translated key
cultural works from a feminist perspective (such as the feminist retranslation of the
Bible). They also challenged and undermined traditional translation theory by
asserting translators’ identity and visibility, by destroying the illusion of translation
transparency through textual and paratextual means, and by confronting the notion
of equivalence through highlighting the processes of re-reading and rewriting.
4 1 Introduction
Yet, despite the undisputed contribution of feminist translation practice and

theory, this radical perspective, born in the era when an essentialist focus on gender
prevailed, has been, like gender and language studies and after gender and language
studies, challenged by the post-structuralist conceptualizations of gender and lan-
guage in “third wave” feminism. The moments for the gender theories and gender
and language theories that underpinned feminist translation studies for the last three
decades “have passed” and “are no longer sufficient” (Cameron 1995: 39). New
concept of gender instability is “undermin[ing]” the categories and certainties that
underlie the feminist translation practice and studies during “second wave” femi-
nism, and “interesting shifts in focus” have happened in the field of gender and
translation studies (von Flotow 1999: 284, 285). However, up to now, most pub-
lications bringing together gender issues and translation have subscribed to the
conventional assumption that femininity and masculinity are essential features of
people and have focused on women as a special minority group that is allocated
subordinate position in patriarchy. Research, especially empirical ones, from a
shifted perspective that focuses on the discursive and contingent aspect of gender
have barely been carried out.
1.3 Objectives of the Study
Given that the research focus of both gender and language studies and gender and
translation studies has been shifting from structuralist to post-structuralist, the
examination of gender issues in translation means the re-examination of gender as a
contextually fluctuating construct and translation as a discourse that is deeply
implicated in cross-social and cross-cultural power struggles and ideological con-
flicts. And given that such re-examination has only barely begun, the need to
provide research data for theoretical debate and to attain further understanding of
the intersection of gender and translation from a discursive perspective surfaces.
Adopting the perspective of post-structuralist discursive conceptualizations of
gender and language/discourse and drawing on the theoretical framework of Critical
Discourse Analysis, the present study aims to explore gender construction and
representation in literary translation through a case study of the English translations
of the Chinese novel Chenzhong De Chibang [沉重的翅膀] (the novel and the
translations will be introduced in details in the following chapter) with the assis-
tance of corpus. It attempts to provide answers to the following questions:
(1) How do female and male translators construct their gender identities through
language in translation?
(2) How do they represent gender constructed in the source text in translation?
(3) How does the identity of translator interact with gender identity? That is, to
what extent the constraints that translation is subjected to and the issues of
fidelity and invisibility may intervene in the construction and representation of
gender in the target text?
1.3 Objectives of the Study 5
(4) How can gender construction and representation in the translations by female
and male translators be comprehended in a post-structuralist discursive sense?
What are the discourses that shape the way gender is represented and con-
structed in the literary translations by the translators?
1.4 Significance of the Study
The present study positioned against the general backdrop of “third wave” femi-
nism makes contributions to the following relevant fields: the field of cultural
studies, wherein the manipulation of culture and ideology is examined; the field of
gender studies, which examines gender variable in all aspects of human life and
society; the field of gender and language studies, which examines the category of
gender in the specific aspect of human language and has recently developed a
critical perspective; and the field of translation studies, wherein the manipulation of
literature in a given context is examined.
Within the field of cultural studies, the study makes specific contributions to the
field of Chinese studies, as it brings linguistic as well as broader socio-historical
aspects together. In focusing on the context of the gender representation in Chinese
literature, the study provides information on Chinese gender culture in a given time.
As for the contributions made to the field of gender studies, the study highlights
the long-ignored Chinese dimension from the western perspective (Mills and
Mullany 2011: 8, 9). It offers alternative foci to examine gender from mainstream
white Western feminist linguistics and culture, extends the understanding of the
diversity of women’s identity, and stresses the contextual effects on the construction
of gender in a specific culture other than the West.
The study also contributes to the field of gender and language studies in that it is
a different research trajectory as it offers the alternative perspective of translational
discourse to examine issues at the interface of gender and language. Translational
language, as an alternative to conversation and speech, which are conventional
genres to be focused upon in the field of gender and language enquiry, adds a new
dimension to the dynamics of the thriving field and may elicit new understanding of
the relationship between gender and language.
Finally, as for the field of translation studies, the present study constitutes a shift
away from previous feminist translation studies paradigms, pointing towards new
areas of research at the interface of gender, ideology, language and translation, and
opening up different kind of questions for the field of gender and translation studies
as well as for the exploration of the ideological nature of translation. To be more
specific, it tries to investigate translator’s gendered practice and the ways translator
represents/constructs gender in literary translation from the perspective of
post-structuralist discursive conceptualization of gender and discourse. It will argue
that translation as a discourse offers translators space to perform their gender
identities; yet it also exerts constraints upon their gender performance (Butler 1999)
6 1 Introduction
so that the interaction between gender and the identity of translator would mean that
the performance can never be free and that the linguistic border between femininity
and masculinity may dissolve at certain points.
1.5 Organization of the Book
The book is composed of seven chapters. The Chap. 1 introduces the status quo of
gender and language studies where the entanglement of gender issues with language
issues is explored, and of translation studies in which gender is perceived to be a
power-ridden ideological concept that interfaces with and impacts upon translation
studies. In so doing, it sets forth the major issues that confront contemporary studies
at the crossroad of gender, language and translation, and consequently raises
questions to which the present study attempts to provide answers. Based on the
objectives of the study, its significance is claimed.
Chapter 2 will review the work on gender and translation studies first. It will
examine three paradigms of studies. As it will be demonstrated that publications
under the first paradigm are the majority although it is the other two paradigms of
studies that are in accordance with the post-structuralist re-conceptualizations of the
concepts of gender and language and that are undermining the first paradigm. The
chapter will then review studies on the novel Chenzhong De Chibang as well as its
translations,
Chapter 3 introduces the theories that lay the foundation for the study. First, the
theorization of subjectivity and language from the post-structuralist perspective is
introduced, because the study draws on post-structuralist discursive conceptual-
izations of gender and language as the overall theoretical framework. Then, the
theories and research approaches for gender and language studies that draws on a
post-structuralist discourse perspective are discussed, with the most emphasis on
the local and discursive construction of gender. It is from here that a critical
perspective upon the discursivity and locality of gender identity is felt to be nec-
essary. Critical Discourse Analysis is introduced to be an effective approach to the
understanding of the specificity of the interaction of power, ideology and gender
identity in a given context, and of how translational communications can be con-
strained by the structures and forces of the social institutions within which the
translational communication events occur.
Chapter 4, concerned with the methodology for the study, first offers an over-
view of the methodological basis. Then the specific texts as the subject of the case
study are selected with the reasons for the selection stated. Following that, the
corpus and software adopted are introduced. Since the anchor point of further
interpretation and explanation is the analysis of the linguistic forms of the texts
from gender perspective, the most emphasis of the chapter is given to the part where
linguistic features that are likely to represent the construction of gender or the
1.5 Organization of the Book 7
working of gender ideology are selected as corpus search items, in reference to key
works on gender and language studies, ideology and language/discourse, and
Critical Discourse Analysis.
Chapter 5 presents the results of text analysis. The analysis focuses on (1) the
language use of the male and female translators; (2) the gender representation in
their translations; and (3) the possible shaping factors behind the linguistic per-
formance of the translators. The first and second parts will deal respectively with
the analysis of the translators’ language use in constructing gender identities along
different dimensions and the gender representation through translation of gendered
discourses in the source texts by the two translators. As patterns emerge from the
analysis, the discourses constitutive of the translators’ gender identities as well as
determinative of the gender representation will be recognized. The final part of the
chapter is a discussion of the workings of the discourses that produce the
translations.
As a conclusion, the final chapter summarizes the major findings of the study,
discusses its implications and limitations, and offers suggestions for future studies.
References
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Coates, J. 1993. Women, Men and Language, 2nd ed. Harlow: Longman.
Eckert, P. 1989. The whole woman: Sex and gender differences in variation. Language Variation
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Lakoff, R. 1975. Language and Woman’s Place. New York: Harper and Row.
Lazar, M. 2005. Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis. Hampshire & New York: Palgrave.
Locke, J. 2011. Duels and Duets: Why Men and Women Talk so Differently. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Mills, S., and L. Mullany. 2011. Language, Gender and Feminism. London and New York:
Routledge.
Simon, S. 1996. Gender in Translation. London and New York: Routledge.
Spender, D. 1980. Man Made Language. London: Routledge.
Tannen, D. 1991. You Just Don’t Understand! Women and Men in Conversation. London: Virago.
Talbot, M. 1998. Language and Gender. London: Polity.
von Flotow, L. 1999. Genders and the translated text: Developments in “transformance”. Textus
12: 275–288.
Weedon, C. 1997. Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Chapter 2
Literature Review
2.1 Gender and Translation Studies
It is hardly a coincidence that the period which saw the development of feminist and then
gender studies also witnessed a remarkable growth in translation studies. The entry of
gender into translation theory has a lot to do with the renewed prestige of translation as
“re-writing” and as a bulwark against the unbridled forces of globalization, just as it shows
the importance for all the social and human sciences of a critical reframing of gender,
identity and subject-positions within language. (Simon 1996: ix)
Over the past half century, and as part of the result of women’s movement in the
west, gender issues have developed an increasingly close relation with the issues of
language. Patriarchal language that is believed to be one major channel of male
dominance has been critiqued and become one of the dynamics of second wave
feminism. Over the same period, translation studies have taken a turn towards a
growing concern for cultural studies. The “cultural turn” implies adding an
important dimension where a descriptive approach is emphasized that encourages
description of translations as they are and interpretation of the impact of contextual
factors. Both gender studies and translation studies, similarly grounded in the
dynamics of a period when language was given strong prominence, are brought into
relationship with each other, giving rise to a number of issues, which include, but
not limited to: what cultural gender differences are, how these differences are
revealed in language, and how these differences can be transferred across
languages?
The initial context that the above questions emerge is to be found with the
Canadian feminist translation experience (von Flotow 1991: 72). The beginning of
feminist translation practice was with the French-language feminist experimental
writing in Quebec. The radical feminist writers, seeking to undermine, deconstruct
and subvert the conventional everyday language that they perceive as inherently
misogynist, produce works that are highly experimental. A method to translate the

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3720-8_2
10 2 Literature Review
subversive language experiments, feminist translation is developed out of a desire

to promote literary mediation and dialogue between French Quebec and English
Canada (Simon 1996: viii). As a direct derivative and response to feminist writing,
feminist translation shares the former’s general viewpoint that conventional and
prescriptive patriarchal language has to be undone in order for women’s voice to be
spread and heard. Yet sited in the field of translation studies, feminist approach to
translation that has appropriated and adapted many of the techniques and theories
that underlie the writing it translates challenges the notions of fidelity, transparency
and definitive meaning in traditional translation with creative and non-traditional
strategies such as supplementation, hijacking and interference, etc. (von Flotow
1991: 74–79). Motivated by second wave feminism and indebted to deconstruction
as well (ibid: 80–81), feminist translators are given relative freedom in devising and
practicing creative techniques to texts, making their presence felt and challenging
the authors, and thus making changes to some of crucial traditional views of
translation.
As second wave feminism gradually gives way to the third wave, the
Canadian-origin feminist translation practice and the theories that underlie it are
being challenged. While the socially constructed notions of what constitutes social
and biological men and women are changing, research on the interaction between
gender and translation expands and is directed toward more challenging uncharted
areas. According to von Flotow (1999, 2007), two paradigms prevail in current
work at the interface of translation studies and gender studies. The first one holds
the conventional assumption that biologically different women and men possess
distinctive femininity and masculinity that are socially constructed. The second one
develops from the influence of third wave feminism and takes gender as a process
and discursive rather than biologically determined and fixed. Translation studies of
the first paradigm tend to subscribe to the basic assumption of second wave fem-
inism that women as an underprivileged group are cast outside of history through
patriarchal language. The second paradigm, on the other hand, focuses on the
“performative” (Butler 1999) aspect of identity as well as translation.
In addition to the two paradigms of gender and translation studies, there is one
more emergent recently. The third group is characteristic of a combination of
feminist translation studies and feminist linguistics, where researchers attempt to
perceive translational gender issues from an angle informed by the theories and
practices from the discipline of gender and language studies. (cf. Castro 2013a, b,
2009; Ergün 2013) Following Castro (2009), the third kind is called “third wave
feminist translation studies”. The following sections review work in translation
studies of the three kinds.
2.1.1 First Paradigm of Gender and Translation Studies
The first paradigm subsumes most publications that draw translation and gender
issues together. Underlying the first paradigm are two basic assumptions. One is
2.1 Gender and Translation Studies 11
that two different and distinct groups of people can be identified in every society/
culture as women and men who are not equally privileged, with women largely
located in a subordinate position either in family or in public. The other is the
notion that gender, which is constructed in and imposed by society, has a solid
biological basis and is a set of biologically determined characteristics to be found in
women and men. As a direct offshoot of second wave feminism, the first paradigm
of gender and translation studies endorses the stance that the mainstream patriarchal
language plays a critical, if not the dominant, role in imposing gender restrictions,
in applying and consolidating a society’s notions about gender, gender expectations
and gendered behaviors as well as in recreating and rewriting texts. They subscribe
to the ideas derived from second wave feminism and focus on women as an
oppressed minority group in literary circle who have been subjected to biased
treatment, buried or forgotten. According to von Flotow (2010: 123–126), research
that integrate gender into translation under the first paradigm does so on three main
themes, (1) gender as socio-political issues in macro-analyses of translation;
(2) gender as categories in micro-analyses of translation; (3) gender-related theo-
rization of translation. The categorization is adopted for the following review of
work within the first paradigm.
2.1.1.1 Gender as Socio-Political Issue in Macro-Analyses

of Translation
Implicating gender as a socio-political category in macro-analyses of works of

translation reveals the fact that women have been excluded from or negatively
represented in the literary histories of different cultures across the world. Revision
of translations of important cultural texts such as the Bible from gender perspective
has led to new readings of them. Since the uproar-evoking The Women’s Bible
appeared at the end of 19th century, gender-conscious translation criticism and
retranslation of several sets of Biblical texts have appeared from the 1970s,
focusing particularly on inclusive forms of language that directly address women
and reveal their identity and presence. The criticism and retranslations have given
rise to extensive and heated debate about the role of gender within the Bible, and
about the parameters within which translation must operate (Ringe 1987; Dewey
1991; Castelli 1990). Such critiques and rehabilitative efforts are based on the
revisionist studies of the Bible that have shown that the translations have interpreted
the ancient texts purposefully in such a way as to define women as the sources that
“brought sin and death into the world” (Stanton, quoted in Simon 1996: 108) or the
root of evil (Korsak 1994/1995), and casting the image of God as male.
Gender-conscious revisionist criticism has also engaged other literary writings
and translations. Feminists point out that traditional literary cannon about aesthetics
and value is made from male author’s perspective and thus leads to the output of
numerous women writers being neglected or forgotten. Their effort to counter the
effect of the patriarchal literary cannon constitutes the impetus for the research drive
that generates the recovery and discussion of the under- or un-documented work of
women translators such as the women translators of Latin and Greek classics in
Eighteenth-century Britain (Agorni 2005), in colonial and modern-day Korea
(Hyun 1992, 2003), the sixteenth-century Tudor women as patrons, translators and
writers of religious works (Hannay 1985), the women writers and translators in
Renaissance England (Krontiris 1992), the nineteenth-century women translators
(Stark 1993; Zwarg 1990), and the texts about translation written by “lost” women
translators (Robinson 1995).
For example, Hannay’s (1985) collection of essays shows how texts on religious
subjects offered the few learned women of England during the Reformation the only
way to make their voice and use their intellect.
…women were permitted to break the rule of silence only to demonstrate their religious
devotion by using their wealth to encourage religious education and publication by men, by
translating the religious works of other (usually male) writers, and more rarely, by writing
their own devotional meditations. (Hannay 1985: 4)
Hannay argues that the result of restriction to religious writing for women at that
time is, on the one hand, the output of numerous religious texts that the Protestant
church could benefit from, and, on the other, a channel for the wealthy and learned
women to “insert personal and political statements” which they otherwise would
hardly have a chance to make because they sometimes subverted the texts they
translated (ibid). In a similar fashion, Krontiris (1992) is also written from the
perspective of feminist historical research and is a search for a lineage of effective
and energetic women. Both the anthology of Hannay’s (1985) and Krontiris’ book
(1992) establish a history of subversive women. The women translators introduced
and examined in the books appear subversive because they not only dared to
publish in an environment where women were debarred from original discourse, but
also showed awareness of the social restrictions that were imposed upon women.
Indeed, Robinson’s (1995) essay demonstrates such gender awareness shown by
the middle-class women translators of the period. His essay investigates the remarks
of Margaret Tyler in 1578, Suzanne du Vegerre in 1639, Katherine Philips in 1662–
1663, and Aphra Behn in 1688. According to Robinson, these women subverted
rhetorical strategies that had long been in use among men for addressing patrons
and beloveds and for inculcating moral lessons. Margret Tyler, for example,
explores the traditional rhetoric by male writers that women are their muses and
claim that women have right to express themselves. She argues that women should
be allowed to read and translate what men dedicate to them, and there is no
difference between men dedicating stories to women and women writing their own.
In so doing, Tyler transforms the silent and passive female muse into active reader/
writer/translator, which is a departure from conventional male rhetoric.
In addition to the revision of the Bible and the recovery of “lost” women
translators, the works of quite a few neglected women writers from non-Western
cultures or from the past have also been unearthed, translated or re-translated, such
as women writers in India (Tharu and Lalita 1991/1993), and women writers of
post-Cold War East Central Europe (Schwartz and von Flotow 2005). One example
of the kind is the anthology, Translating Slavery: Gender and Race in French
Women’s Writing, 1783–1823 (Kadish and Massardier-Kenney 1994). The

anthology assembles, translates and discusses the works bearing on slavery of three
French women Olympe de Gouges, Germaine de Staël and Claire de Duras, of late
eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Focusing on the interface between trans-
lation, gender and race, the volume demonstrates that women featured as important
writers and thinkers in resisting the “joint oppression of slaves and women” (2).
The source texts are contextualized in their specific historical and cultural envi-
ronment first, then translated, and followed by a translation analysis where the
translators and editors discuss the possible reasons why the texts have been ignored
as well as problems concerning translating gender and race. The objective of this
volume is multi-fold. One is to unearth the works of a group of intellectual women
and show their achievements in resisting the norms and values of their day’s.
Another one is to make available the English versions of the texts dealing with
slaves and slavery written by French women of the period that foregrounds a French
tradition of women’s antislavery writings. One more, which is equally important, is
that the volume acknowledges and deals with the historical and cultural gap
between the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century source texts and the contemporary
translators and target readers. By looking at what happens when translators translate
and when writers write about gender and race, it points to the ideological nature of
translation in expressing local values and the relative nature of aesthetics.
2.1.1.2 Gender as Categories in Micro-analyses of Translation
When gender is perceived as an analytic category for the micro-analysis of specific

translated texts, the focus is on how particular linguistic features constitute gen-
dered discourses. When a text is gendered in any way, the translation can be
susceptible to such gendered linguistic manifestations. It may conceal them,
highlight them or rewrite them through the adoption of various translation strategies
and techniques. The strategies acquainted through such micro-analysis often give
clues to the gender norms, restrictions and expectations of the translating culture.
Research of this kind often focus on the works of important writers who are
regarded crucial for the feminist movements. The translations of works by a number
of key women writers are critically reviewed, among whom Sappho, Louise Labé
and Simone de Beauvoir are most focused upon. Sappho is known as one of the few
public literary women at ancient Greece. Although only fragmentary poems by her
have survived from that time, they have been translated in a diverse way and
Sappho have become an unignorable woman writer in literary history. The sonnets
of Louise Labé, the well-educated daughter of a ropemaker who lived in Lyon
France in the sixteenth century, were published in 1555 and are still widely
available in various translation versions. Contemporary studies on Sappho by
DeJean (1989), Rayor (1991), and Prins (1999) examine a number of these trans-
lations the two poets’ works from a gender-conscious perspective, making com-
ments on and criticisms of the differences among the translations. Though
acknowledging that any translation makes changes to a source text, these scholars
focus on gender issues from a different perspective. Diane Rayor, for instance,
believes that Sappho’s gender impacts on the perception and translation of her
works so that misrepresentations and constant re-creations of different images of
Sappho appear from different versions of translation. Citing other translations of
Sappho where the translators tend to repair and fix the fragments, she shows how
the translations rewrite the original texts in patriarchal forms that change Sappho’s
poetic strategies and impose masculine interpretation upon the poem.
Rayor’s main concern is with the problem of how to translate the fragmentary
remains of Sappho’s work and reproduce the distinct female voice. Jane Batchelor
(1995), however, interrogates the translations of Louise Labé with questions con-
cerning the effects that feminist readings of Labé have on the translations of her
works. To address the questions, she compares “pre-feminist” and “post-feminist”
translations of the same poem and examines translators’ introduction to their
translations. The result of her comparison implies that translations written after
around 1975 are likely to be influenced by feminist ideas and thus tend to avoid
gender stereotyping, whereas earlier “pre-feminist” works are largely dominated by
a more traditional view of women.
Finally, the case of Simone de Beauvoir in English translation is a source of
examples of intellectual and literary censorship that has made her thought distorted
and misrepresented. Le Deuxième Sexe, lauded as the “feminist bible”, was trans-
lated into English by the American zoologist professor Howard Parshley and
published in 1952. The translation was fiercely criticized particularly because the
mediator deleted more than ten percent of the original without making it known to
the readers. Considerable sections that recount the names and achievements of 78
women, who were politicians, military leaders, saints, artisans and poets in history,
have been erased from the translation, thus breaking the lineage of important
women figures who are meaning for feminism (Simons 1983). In addition, refer-
ences to cultural taboos such as lesbian relationships were also cut off from the
translation. Because of these deletions, de Beauvoir’s thoughts appear incoherent
and confusing. The motivation for such blatant deletion lies perhaps with a male
assumption of what should be interesting for most men. According to Simons, “He
didn’t care to have discussions of women’s oppression belaboured, although he was
quite content to let Beauvoir go on at length about the superior advantages of man’s
situation and achievements…” (Simons 1983: 562)
The way how feminist innovative writings are translated and how feminist
translators interact with the source text is another research subject for
gender-conscious micro-analysis of translation. One focus is on translating into
English the language-centered texts by French-speaking feminist writers in which
the French language grammatical gender is challenged to undermine the conven-
tional patriarchal forms. The satirical novel L’Eugélionne (1976) written by Louky
Bersianik to critique the gender bias and asymmetry in the French linguistic system,
for example, poses challenges for translating it into English, yet are also sources of
meaning-making and open to intervention for political message (Simon 1996: 18).
Another example is translating the avant-garde poetry and prose by the Quebec
radical experimental writer Nicole Brossard into English. To transfer the
foregrounding of gender in French, the translator Lotbinière-Hardwood coined new

ways of English gender-marking as a response (ibid.: 20). Similarly, in translating
Brossard’s neologisms in her post-modern work Picture Theory, Godard empha-
sizes the “transreferential process” of translation, continuing the process of meaning
creation in translation that the author initiated in the source text (ibid.: 20–25). In so
doing, the translator brings to the source text readers not only the thoughts of the
author, but also her own voice: “The reader is reading Nicole Brossard and Barbara
Godard together.” (ibid.: 25) The translations of the works of French-speaking
experimental writers by the feminist translators such as Godard and
Lotbinière-Hardwood, and the commentaries and the theoretical claims accompa-
nying the translations on the issues of rendering feminist experimental neologisms
by these translators (Godard 1984, 1990, 1991, 1995; Lotbinière-Hardwood 1991,
1994) constitute a huge body of literature for feminist translations and feminist
translation studies as well.
2.1.1.3 Gender-Related Theorization of Translation
Feminist translation practice concerning the feminist innovative writings have an

even greater impact on the theorization of gender and translation. It has given rise to
theoretical and ethical questions such as whether and how biological sex or gender
affiliation influence the translation process, whether deliberate interventionist
translation in the name of gender politics is ethically justified, and the even broader
question of how traditional gender stereotypes have impacted on the status of
translation and in what way perceptions about translation reflect society’s gender
relations.
Chamberlain’s (1988) well-known study of the gendered metaphors of transla-
tions across cultures and history underlines the fact that the “sexualization of
translation” (455) both reflect and structure the conceptualization of gender rela-
tions in a society, and reveals the power play involved in both cross-cultural lin-
guistic transfer and the relations between women and men. Focusing on the close
connection between women’s oppression in language and culture and the devalu-
ation of translation, she analyzes terms frequently adopted in translation criticism.
The term “les belles infidèles”, for example, demonstrates clearly the denigration of
both women and translation. Citing historical discourses, she first demonstrates that
the metaphor genders translation by “mimic[ing] the patrilineal kinship system
where paternity … legitimizes an offspring”, i.e., how it is historically intertwined
with power relations in the family in terms of male control of female sexuality.
Thus, the translator becomes the father who seduces the mistress (the author-text)
and the translation is unfaithful to the author. Then, she illustrates how translation is
depicted as a problem of fidelity to the “mother tongue”. The concern is also
motivated by the comparison of translation as “the literary equivalent of colo-
nization” (459) when violence against the colonized is comparable both to the
violence against captive women and to the intervention to a translated text.
Following that, Chamberlain shows that twentieth-century translation theorists such
as George Steiner and Serge Gavronsky have exploited the sexual language and
mythology to describe translation in terms of Oedipus complex and “erotic pos-
session” (463) and the ignoring women’s participation and contribution. After the
proceeding discussion, Chamberlain argues that
This survey of the metaphors of translation would suggest that the implied narrative con-
cerns the relation between the value of production versus the value of reproduction. What
proclaims itself to be an aesthetic problem is represented in terms of sex, family, and the
state, and what is consistently at issue is power. (465)
She further argues that “the reason translation is so overcoded, so overregulated, is

that it threatens to erase the difference between production and reproduction which is
essential to the establishment of power” (466). Finally, based on Derrida’s theory,
Chamberlain advocates a feminist theory of translation “where author and translator
are seen as working together, both in the cooperative and the subversive sense” (470),
meaning the power play between the texts as well as the sexes that is deconstructed
and translation practice that goes beyond textual and sexual boundaries.
While Chamberlain’s discussion of the historical and cultural metaphors is
significantly influential for feminist approaches to translation theories, Godard’s
theory of “woman-handling” (Godard 1990) is more aggressive and action-oriented.
There are two major points in her theory. The first one is feminist translators derive
the right to woman-handle the text from the source text which underlies subversive
actions. Coining the term “transformance”, she defines feminist translation as “the
process of constructing meaning in the activity of transformation, a mode of per-
formance” (90). She further formulates her idea as “translation, in this theory of
feminist discourse, is production, not reproduction …” (ibid.) The other important
point in her theorization is the deconstruction of the conventional notion of
translation equivalence. While pursuit of equivalence in conventional translation
produce texts that are acceptable to mainstream criteria, both the source text and the
target text must suffer reduction. Such equivalence is questionable for feminist
works because what they are aimed to do is to challenge the mainstream writing and
reading and highlight the difference. Therefore, feminist translation should be
characteristic of the unconventional, the foreign and the traces of the source text.
Her analysis and critique of the English versions of work by French theorists
Luce Irigaray and Hélène Cixous (Godard 1991) materializes her feminist trans-
lation theory and constitutes an attack of conventional, mainstream translation of
women’s work. For Godard, the translation of Irigaray’s work is made fit to the
dominant canonized ideology, the multiple layers of meaning which carry feminist
significance being ignored and reduced. She said, the translation “use[s] the
behavior patterns and models prominent in the canonized system of the target
language with the effect of turning the different into the same” (113). The trans-
lation may appear more acceptable to the readers, but does not represent Irigaray’s
complete ideas and intentions. On the other hand, the translation of Cixous’ work,
which was produced in cooperation with the author herself, keeps the features of the
source text and is written in a strange English language form comparable to that of
the French text.
2.1.1.4 Criticism of the First Paradigm
The positions and motivations of the first paradigm gender and translation studies
have been under criticism from various scholars from different perspectives within
feminisms. The harshest words, perhaps, come from Brazilian critic Arrojo (1994)
who call feminist interventionism in translation “opportunistic”, “double standard”,
and “theoretical incoherence”. First, it is an “ambivalent, rather opportunistic brand
of ‘faithfulness’” (Arrojo 1994: 152) that feminist translators such as Suzanne Jill
Levine and feminist theorists like Lori Chamberlain claim. Levine, according to
Arrojo, seems to be convinced that her “subversive” intervention “not only allows
her to express her own criticism of the ‘original’ but also to claim some form of
‘fidelity’ to the text she translates” (ibid). In Arrojo’s view, Levine, as well as
Chamberlain who supports her practice, is merely exploiting feminism and trying to
promote their own politics. What they are actually faithful to are, as Arrojo see it,
the “values that constitute the communities which have accepted and praised them”
(ibid: 160). The communities in this context refer to the feminist ones.
The second point raised against the feminist work is their “double standard”.
For, Arrojo, the “double standard” is to define traditional male theorists’ view as
violent and aggressive, yet not to see feminist subversion and intervention as such.
She gives as an example Chamberlain’s illustration of Drant’s preface to his
translation of Horace, drawing a comparison with Levine’s proclamation. Her
conclusion is that “if Drant’s ‘appropriation’ of Horace’s text can be associated to
colonialism and rape, it seems difficult to avoid the fact that Levine’s ‘woman-
handling’ of Infante’s text can also remind us of an act of ‘castration’ which is
‘justified’ by the feminist need to subvert an obviously sexist ‘original’” (ibid: 154).
Therefore, feminists are applying double angles in perceiving their own practices
and those of male translators and theorists, which may imply the danger of being
perceived as overcorrection.
Arrojo’s last point is the “theoretical incoherence” she sees in feminist dis-
courses on translation. This is evident not only in the claim of “subversive fidelity”,
but also in the general references to deconstructionist work upon which feminist
critics and translators base some of their ideas. Quoting von Flotow (1991) as point
to lay the attack, she writes, “the ‘Derridian revision of key concepts in Western
philosophy’ has indeed ‘stimulated renewed interest in the work of the translator’,
but it has not, by any means, ‘endowed’ the female translator with ‘the right and
even duty to ‘abuse’ the source text” (ibid: 157, emphasis original). Based on
Derrida’s own letter in which he discussed the translation of the word “decon-
struction”, Arrojo claims that “no meaning can ever be ‘reproduced’ or ‘recovered’
but is, instead, always already created, or recreated, anew” (ibid: 158). Thus, she
continues, “being ‘unfaithful’ to the ‘original’ cannot be merely a ‘right’, or a
‘duty’; it is every translator’s and every reader’s inevitable fate” (ibid). The effect of
this view is to cancel out women’s optimistic assumption that they can act upon a
text independently, and that the interventionist, creative approaches that have come
to define feminist work in translation seem to be mere illusion.
For Arrojo, the validation of the subversive and abusive right of feminist
translators toward the text is not to be found in Derrida’s deconstruction, but rather
in “the communities that are ready to accept or absorb ‘the emerging women’s
culture’ and which share or sympathize with the same values and political interests”
(ibid 159). The only kind of fidelity that the feminist translators and critics owe is
the one they owe to the feminist assumptions as members of the cultural community
of feminism.
This fidelity to feminist assumptions which have promoted success in revealing
patriarchal views of translation and translators as acknowledged by Arrojo, is also
problematic, however, from the hindsight of post-structuralist feminist theories. The
basic premise of feminist translation practice, which is triggered by feminist
experimental writing, is that conventional language is an important cause of
women’s oppression, a manipulative tool that men hold to subordinate women for
their own interests. Therefore, it is imperative to revamp the conventional language
in full scale so that women’s specificity could be accounted for and women’s
independent development be made possible. For translation studies, the tasks
include revealing the traditional gender bias in the theorization of translation,
examining the historiography of translation through recovering the women trans-
lators and writers and their works lost in patriarchy, and conducting re-readings of
key feminist works and their translations. All these are done based on the
assumption that women as a group in general, and women writers and translators in
specific, are debased and suppressed by men as the other group. In other words,
patriarchy is the cause of the invisibility of women writers and translators and of the
distortion and misrepresentation of their works. Such a monolithic view of male
suppression is somewhat partial and thus of little help from the perspective of
post-structuralism. In accounting for gender-related translational phenomena, the
specific location of male power in a specific society and culture, and the practices
supporting that power in that society and culture should be taken into serious
consideration. The factor of gender hardly works alone; it is often compounded by
other cultural and social factors.
An example to demonstrate the interaction of gender with other social dimen-
sions in impacting on translation is the first Chinese translation1 of Doris Lessing’s
The Grass is Singing. Published in the 1950s in mainland China, the translation is a
rewriting of the original to so large extent that the theme of the work is recon-
structed as anti-racism and anti-colonialism, although the original work is a fiction
that depicts the inner struggle of a white woman who tries to master her own fate.
The Chinese translation deliberately changes the protagonist from the white female
character to her black male servant, and negative evaluations against the white
female character are added intentionally to the text to develop the coined theme of
racism and colonialism. Such distortion of the original meaning in the translation is
accounted for by the social and political background of the time of translation. Back
in the 1950s mainland China, the prevalent political climate was anti-imperialism
1
This example is discussed in details in Li (2012).
and anti-colonialism, and the Chinese people tended to identify with third-world
countries and people rather than the imperialist west. Against this big backdrop,
women issues and feminism have to make way for the other, more important
problem of national salvation. In the specific political context of 1950s China, when
gender issues came into conflict with national issues, the latter always weighed
over; when they did not, they were always subordinate to the latter. In a word, the
way gender is represented in the translated text, be it a deviation from the original or
not, cannot be assumed to be determined completely by the single factor of patri-
archy; it is rather a local effect that is achieved within the historically specific
context.
2.1.2 Second Paradigm of Gender and Translation Studies
2.1.2.1 Status Quo of the Second Paradigm
As the post-structuralist conceptualization of gender as discursive and fluctuating

identity began to take hold from early 1990s, gender and translation studies from
late 1990s made response to the new development. Researchers began to question
the notion of the biologically determined male/female binary opposition and come
to subscribe to the new idea that the diversity of gender orientation, which is
compounded by race, ethnicity, class and other socio-political elements, is so great
that it is problematic to consider anyone as essentially male or female. The result of
this inquiry and realignment is the second paradigm of gender and translation
studies, which is at present still in development.
One of the first to question the close and rigid link between feminism and gender
and to connect gender instability with translation are Carol Maier and Françoise
Massardier-Kenney. Based on the theorization of Judith Butler that gender identity
is “an illusion discursively maintained for the purposes of the regulation of sexu-
ality within the obligatory frame of reproductive heterosexuality” (Butler 1999:
186), Maier and Massardier-Kenney (1996) write, “gender definitions are neither
universal nor absolute manifestations of inherent differences but relatively local,
constantly changing constructions contingent on multiple historical and cultural
factors”, and gender characteristics and gendered behavior “do not represent a
fixed, seamless identity”, but rather are subject to many different influences (Maier
and Massardier-Kenney 1996: 230). They call for an exploration of the ways in
which translation might lead to rethinking of the notion of gender and gender
identity, by setting aside definitions that seem natural to translators and by
attempting to work with whatever definitions of gender the source text might
present. They also suggest that translators can use their practice as a vehicle for
interrogating the complexities of the bond that translation has with gender and use
terms like “women-identified” and “gender” instead of the term “feminist”, which
they found problematic for those wanting to interrogate the very category of gender.
For them, translation is the vehicle that is wonderfully suited to reveal the instability
of the concept of gender,
Recent work…subjects the terms ‘feminism’ and ‘women’ themselves to what could be
likened to exercises in translation, in which those terms are shown to be unstable points of
departure for either theory or practice. Such questioning has made evident—and to a degree
perhaps possible only through the practice of translation… (ibid)
They believe that active translation does not depart from predetermined gender
definitions, but must lead to an interrogation of such definitions.
However, Massardier-Kenney (1997) is concerned with the problem that the
interrogation of gender may reveal that what is defined as feminine or as women
tends to be viewed not only as different but as something of lesser value than other
term and that the notion of gender may mask the radical power asymmetry between
the masculine and the feminine. One way to address the problem, according to her,
is “to redefine the use of the terms ‘feminist’ or ‘feminine’ in a way that
acknowledges their complexity and perhaps the inevitability of their theoretical
inadequacy” (Massardier-Kenney 1997: 56). She suggests feminist translation
practice start by acknowledging the complexity and the socially constructed nature
of the notion of feminine, and by being aware that in reaching the goal of making
the feminine visible, feminist translators are actually adapting existing strategies
rather than inventing new ones. It is precisely the thought-to-be-created translation
strategies such as “hijacking”, according to Massardier-Kenney, that carry the
connotation of feminist “distortion” and “extortion” (ibid 58). For her, the question
is whether one can attempt to make the so-called feminine subject visible in lan-
guage without resorting to the set definitions and by working with texts which are
not necessarily feminist from an Anglophone perspective.
A just right response to Massardier-Kenney (1997), a “woman-interrogated”
approach to translation is proposed by Maier (1998), as she has
come to think of working not as a woman-identified translator, but as one who questions,
even interrogates gender definitions—one who can hold ‘natural’ definitions of gender in
abeyance, attempting to identify one’s practice as a translator in a way that is open to and
can thus interact with whatever gender identity (or other identity) a translator might
encounter. It would be appropriate to think of this approach as ‘woman-interrogated’
because it involves an endeavour to work less from confidently held definitions than from a
will to participate in re-definitions, to counter the restrictions of a gender-based identity by
questioning gender as the most effective or the most appropriate point of departure for a
translator’s practice. (102)
For Maier, the same as for Massardier-Kenney, neither authors, nor translators,
nor readers conform to any fixed understanding of “woman”, even if they are
defined women by themselves or others. It, therefore, makes sense to discuss the
terms “women” or “feminine” in relation to individual translation approaches and
strategies. The practice of translation, similar to the notion of gender, is perceived
by Maier in terms of a performance which is characteristic of constant change even
to the point of transience rather than definitive and absolute. In this performance, a
translator takes up an “ambivalent” position, inevitably contingent on many factors,
including her own notion of identity (103). Maier’s “woman-interrogated” trans-
lation approach is illustrated by her English translation of the Spanish novel Delirio
y destino: Los veinte años en la vida de una española, which involves “informed,
deliberate editing… bound to address the role gender might have played when the
book was prepared for publication” (101). One example of such “deliberate editing”
is her translation of the second part of the title as “Twenty Years in the Life of a
Spaniard”, eliding the fact that “una española” refers to a Spanish woman. Her
explanation is that since the book has appeared in a series on women writers, there
is a danger of misrepresenting Zambrano, the author, who did not actually see
herself as a woman philosopher.
Similar ideas about gender as a discursive, contingent and performative aspect of
translations are also evident in studies on gay men’s writing and translation.
Focusing on the “whole range of homosexual identities in French and English
fiction” (Harvey 1998: 295), Keith Harvey’s research suggests that these factors
must be taken into consideration in the translation and evaluation of gay’s “camp
talk”. Harvey argues that “camp talk” style signifies “performance rather than
existence” which leads to “a deliberately exaggerated reliance on questions of (self-)
presentation” (ibid: 304). Under the performance paradigm, certain types of writing
and speech are “extrasexual performative gestures” that both denote and generate
gay identity. Harvey’s concern, however, is the translation of this kind of marked
gay language across linguistic and cultural boundaries. His analysis of the French
translation of an English novel and the English translation of a French work
demonstrates how certain norms of the homosexual sub-cultures within the trans-
lating cultures as well as the larger cultural context influence the performative
aspects of the translation significantly. Harvey suggests that the reasons for the
French translator to tone down considerably the camp talk in the English original text
may be that French homosexuals are reluctant “to self-identify according to the
variable of sexuality” (ibid: 311) and they do not want to build up a subcultural
community that challenges heterosexual hegemony. As for the gayed English ver-
sion of the French text, it is suggested that the translation reflects the self-confidence
of a gay community that parodies heterosexuality in the Anglo-American culture.
2.1.2.2 A Critique of the Second Paradigm
Going beyond the conventional male/female binary opposition and questioning the
essentialist understanding of feminine and masculine, the second paradigm of
gender and translation studies has struck and undermined the first paradigm.
However, up to now, both paradigms are viewed as comparable for the reason of
the similarities between them in terms of the challenges they have triggered and the
solutions they call for (von Flotow 2007: 104). Both paradigms are based on
identity-formation and the translators have the freedom either to accept or refuse
this identification. Both are constructivist, in that the first paradigm views gender as
unwittingly constructed from one’s childhood and the second paradigm views it as
deliberately constructed and performed out during one’s adulthood. In addition,
under both paradigms, the mediators in the production of a translation, the trans-
lator, editors, publishers, can choose to take aggressive positions, deliberately
revealing the gendered aspects of the text and making the text suit a certain politics.
Therefore, as von Flotow (2007) suggested, the two gender paradigms, “[t]hough
deemed to be different, or theorized as differently constructed,… have so far pro-
voked stimulating versions of similar types of work” (104). While the comparability
between the two paradigms suggest the theoretical lineage between them, it also
entails risks for doing research under the second paradigm. As the second paradigm
allows deliberate construction and performance of individual identity, it may equal
such performative act to self-autonomy and thus lose sight of the ever-present
power play and power imbalance between women and men. This insidious aspect of
the notion of gender for the second paradigm of gender and translation studies has
already been noticed by Massardier-Kenney (1997), when she suggests that “it
ignores the radical asymmetry in the formation of the masculine and the feminine
and thus, as I increasingly discovered in my translation practice, masks the power
imbalance between the two terms” (Massardier-Kenney 1997: 56). A possible way
to address this problem is another approach that is informed by studies from an
adjacent field of inquiry, i.e. gender and language studies. Within its most
recently-developed model, gender is discursively theorized yet with the issue of
power kept in sight. As an initial attempt to combine the two disciplines, several
studies have been conducted by a group of resourceful scholars.
2.1.3 Third Wave Feminist Translation Studies
Emergent during the later years of the first decade of this century, the third wave
feminist translation studies acknowledge the legacy from traditional feminist
translation studies, yet also identify its limitations from the perspective of third
wave feminism and third wave feminist linguistics.
Castro (2009) is among the initial studies that try to expand the horizons of
feminist translation studies towards a third wave. In her essay, she proposes to
re-examine some of the areas of mutual interest shared by feminisms and translation
with the aid of new feminist approaches and to view translation as acts of “inter-
cultural ideological mediation” (Garrido 2005; quoted in Castro 2009) within the
framework offered by third wave feminist linguistics. According to her, since
translation is primarily an operation on language, the most appropriate approach to
examine how translators transmit their interpretations of the linguistic representa-
tion of gender is “to restore to feminist critical linguistics, which combines critical
linguistics with feminism” (12). Translation conducted within a new methodolog-
ical framework that draws on the perspective of feminist critical discourse analysis
can thus be called “third wave feminist translation” (ibid).
A more formal and schematic initiation of an interdisciplinary framework for the

studies of gender and translation that incorporates third wave feminist linguistics
and feminist translation studies is made in a special issue of the journal Gender and
Language on translation that was published in 2013.
The essays collected in this volume aim to investigate the gender politics of translation
across multiple languages, or, in other words, to reflect upon the intersection between
gender, language and translation and the multiple crossroads that this conceptual triangle
entails. By doing so, they aim ultimately to create an interdisciplinary framework in which
to enhance the study of gender and translation using insights gained through analyses
carried out within critical linguistics; while, at the same time, enriching the understanding
of the relationship between gender and language when approached from a translation
studies perspective. (Castro 2013a: 6, 7)
Based on the type of linguistic approaches adopted, the essays can be categorized
into two groups.
The first group, including four researches that cover a variety of languages such
as Turkish, Galician, Italian, French, German, Spanish and English, considers
translation as an act of linguistic mediation between texts and cultures. Ergün
(2013) focusing on Turkish and English, explores various intersections between
feminist translation and feminist sociolinguistics to bring the fields into conversa-
tion and expand their intellectual and geographic scopes. The author exemplifies
this dialogue by analyzing different instances from translations of feminist novels
from English into Turkish, including tricky problems confronted by herself as a
feminist translator, such as the pro/nominal system. The author considers the
challenges these translations entail due to the asymmetrical position occupied by
the two languages, the disparate status of feminist novels in the source and target
culture, as well as to the different grammatical structures and resources available to
communicate gender in English and Turkish.
Discussing examples of literary translation from English into Galician, Castro
(2013b) explores how non-sexist language is applied in the translation, to examine
to what extent feminist linguistics have had any influence on translation studies.
Considering the double (con)textual responsibility that translators have towards the
source and the target (con)texts, the author intends to show whether a more frequent
use of “inclusive language” when writing original texts within the realm of the
source language are also adopted when rewriting texts in the target language. Far
from getting a positive result, however, her case study of two ideologically dis-
parate rewritings of gender markers into Galician of an English novel demonstrates
that mainstream translations tend to be more conservative than the original dis-
course both in the source language and the target language. This result, according to
the author, reveals a “missing link” between feminist linguistics and translation
studies. Seeking to shed light on the missing link between feminist approaches to
linguistics and to translation studies, the author examines the arguments for and
against the use of inclusive language in literary translation, focusing on the ideo-
logical, poetic and economic pressures that still define the professional practice of
translation.
Still with a view to non-sexist language, yet shifting the target genre from
literary to institutional texts, Elmiger (2013) undertakes a comparative analysis of
the use of the (non-)sexist language in a corpus of official quadrilingual documents
that the Chancellery sends to Swiss citizens, which are made available as transla-
tions in every official language of the country. Framing the study within the new
Federal Language Law adopted in 2007 that demands that official language use
must be non-sexist, the author demonstrates to what extent the official languages in
Switzerland comply with non-sexist language use. He observed that in all four
language versions, combination of different techniques intended to avoid generi-
cally used masculine forms can be found; however, generically used masculine
forms are especially frequent in French and Italian, while generally uncommon in
German and diminishing over time in Romansh.
Also focusing on institutional texts, Santaemilia (2013) focuses on five annual
official reports on equality between women and men, published by the European
Union in English and Spanish, and analyses how international gender-equality texts
that are worded and crafted in English are translated into Spanish in the EU. The
author compiles a corpus of texts in the two languages to analyse how the word
“gender” has fared in Spanish EU institutional translations. The result shows that
the term “género” (literally “gender” in Spanish) accused of being ambiguous for
Spainish, has been increasingly avoided and other options such as “sexo” (literarily
“sex” in Spanish) are explored. However, both feminist scholarship and some
governmental institutions in Spain have amply adopted the neologism “género”.
The Spanish version, the author suggests, may be the result of ideological nego-
tiation and comprise on the one hand, and on the other, of personal struggle to come
to terms with the meaning of gender equality. Translating international
gender-equality texts, the author also suggests, is a privileged site to test the various
meanings of gender across cultures.
The second group, which gathers two studies, shift the focus from the linguistic
analysis of translated texts to how women and men are represented in discourses
related to translation. Godayol (2013) undertakes an overview of the history of
gender metaphors in translation as found in the writings of translators and theorists
from all periods. Through the metaphors appearing in their texts, she examines how
authors such as Gilles Menáge, Friedrich Schleiermacher and George Steiner per-
petuate the patriarchal stereotypes, and how theorists such as Jacques Derrida and
translators such as Carol Maier and other authors seek to go beyond these stereo-
types by forging new non-sexist metaphors. She categorizes these metaphors into
the “borderland metaphors” and the “myths in the feminine”. The other study,
Zethsen and Askehave (2013), is concerned with whether the issue of gender is
relevant to translation discourse. Based on a qualitative analysis of 18 narratives
written by nine male and nine female Danish non-literary professional translators
who have been asked to write about their occupation as translators, they aim to
conclude whether gender is, or not, a relevant factor in the translators’ perceptions
of their professional practice as women and men translators. Concluding that
whereas male and female translators choose to talk about the same themes they
sometimes talk about them in different ways emphasizing different aspects, their
study is an effective empirical research to assess to what extent gendered power
relations are materialized in such a feminized profession as translation.
All these studies pivot around a series of questions that address “the interactions
of gender, language, and translation at the crossroads of disciplines” (Castro 2013a:
10). As language is essential to both research fields of feminist linguistics and
gender and translation studies, these research offer new insights into how the
intersection of gender and translation may have broader implications for studies in
linguistics from transcultural and translingual perspectives, and how gender and
language studies may provide useful reference points for gender and translation
studies.
The present study will follow the research model of the third paradigm of gender
and translation studies, combining critical linguistics with feminism to examine
translation, and hope to make contribution to it.
2.2 Studies on Chenzhong de Chibang and Its Translations
Chenzhong De Chibang [沉重的翅膀] was one masterpiece of Zhang Jie (张洁,

1937-), a well-known female writer in mainland China. Published in Zhang (1981)
by the People’s Literature Publishing House in Beijing, the novel gained an
immediate success and was awarded Mao Dun national prize for fiction2 in 1985.
The novel was first translated in English by Gladys Yang, an English expatriate
who married Chinese and spent most part of her life in mainland China. Titled
Leaden Wings, Yang’s translation was published in 1987 by the London-based
Virago Press. In 1989, Grove Weidenfeld in New York published the other
translation by Howard Goldblatt, under the name Heavy Wings.
Up to now, studies upon the novel are mainly concerned with its literariness,
social value, and narrative and thematic features. Research on its translation, on the
other hand, appear to be small in amount, despite the fact that it has been translated
into thirteen different languages including the English language (Zhou 2013: 98).
The English translations, though are mentioned in some studies, are only referred to
alongside other translated works as examples or cases for discussions of either
translator’s translation style or translation strategies.
Studies that focus on the novel explore it from a literary historical perspective or
examine it in terms of the author’s literary style. Yue (2014) is a literary criticism
that takes a historically interpretative perspective upon the novel and views it as a
historical text that affords an angle to comprehend the development of Chinese
society. Yue suggests that while there is obvious deficiency in the novel, the
2
Named after the renowned Chinese writer Mr. Mao Dun, the prize was set up in 1981 to honor the
most excellent Chinese novels every four years in mainland China.
deficiency is, inevitably, the result of the historically specific context and also
represents the author’s own individual ideology and limitations which are again
caused by the restraints of the social and ideological conditions.
Ren (2011) discusses the transformation of Zhang Jie’s literary style, taking
Chenzhong De Chibang as an example compared with Wu Zi [无字], another
representative novel of Zhang Jie’s. He explores the clues that may indicate the
transformation, which include narrative theme, gendered characterization and plot,
suggesting that while Wu Zi thematizes individuality, femininity and idiosyncrasy,
Chenzhong De Chibang appears just the opposite, which highlights the collective
force of social groups, men’s power and conformity to a particular political ide-
ology in Chinese history. In another study that explores the thematic and narrative
features of Zhang Jie’s work (Zhou 2013), Chenzhong De Chibang is also referred
to as a case, but in a more general fashion.
Discussions of the translations of Chenzhong De Chibang are only found in
studies on the translators, where the translations are introduced as demonstrating the
translators’ style or translation strategies. The case of Gladys Yang as a translator, a
British compatriot and a woman, makes the subject of study for research such as Fu
(2011) and Wang (2014). Fu (2011) argues for the interaction between Yang’s
multiple cultural identities and her translator’s subjectivity. Taking Leaden Wings
as an example, she demonstrates how Yang’s feminist concern impacts upon and is
revealed through her textual and paratextual manipulation of the novel in transla-
tion. In a similar vein, Wang (2014) undertakes an investigation of the interaction
between the cultural identities and translation activities of Gladys Yang from a
post-colonial perspective, yet makes a more thorough case study of her translation,
Leaden Wings. Drawing a comparison between Yang’s translation and the other
English translation by Howard Goldblatt, she demonstrates Yang’s conscious
feminist translation strategies as well as the translator’s concern for the social and
cultural subordination of Chinese women.
While Leaden Wings is sporadically referred to and discussed in studies on its
translator, brief and general in most cases, Heavy Wings is barely mentioned in any
studies, even in studies on its translator Howard Goldblatt (Lv 2012; Shi 2013),
although his other translated works appear to enjoy much more attention.
In general, it appears that studies of the translations of Chenzhong De Chibang
seem to be just at the beginning and consequently quantitatively unimpressive,
leaving much space for further exploration. Admittedly, in several studies such as
introduced above, the feminist elements in Yang’s translation are recognized.
However, the discussion invariably takes an essentialist perspective on gender and
views Yang’s translation as representation of her defiance of patriarchy. Therefore,
these studies inevitably suffer the same problems as those in the framework of the
second wave feminist translation studies.
References 27
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Chapter 3
Theoretical Framework
The aim of this chapter is to introduce the theoretical framework for the study, with
theorization of the key terms upon which the translation analysis that follows will
be based. The study will be generally framed within post-structuralist theories,
combining the “dynamic” (Talbot 1998: 150) approach in gender and language
studies, i.e. feminist critical discourse analysis, with gender and translation studies.
Theorization of language and subjectivity from post-structuralist perspective will be
introduced first. Key terms of discourse and power which are at the core of the
“dynamic” approach to the study of gender and language will be defined then. Since
it is Foucault’s theory that is incorporated into and exerts significant influence upon
the approach, the two crucial concepts of discourse and power will be traced from
his theorization. Following that, as post-structuralism poses major challenge to the
essentialist notion of gender, developing understanding of gender from
post-structuralist perspective will be introduced: gender is considered to be con-
struction in discourse which is subject to power and other non-linguistic contextual
factors. To link individual performance of gender with discourse factors and reveal
the power struggle involved, it is felt that a critical perspective upon the discursivity
and locality of gender identity is necessary. Therefore, the final part will put for-
ward Critical Discourse Analysis as the specific analytical framework for inter-
pretation of the translations, which promises to be useful in connecting textual
elements with layers of contexts.
3.1 Post-structuralist Theorization of Language

and Subjectivity
“While many types of theory appeal to truth value as the guarantee of their adequacy, this is
not the case with poststructuralist theories. Feminist appropriations of poststructuralism
tend to focus on the basic assumptions, the degree of explanatory power and the political

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3720-8_3
30 3 Theoretical Framework
implications which a particular type of analysis yields. … I would argue the appropriateness
of poststructuralism to feminism concerns, not as the answer to all feminist questions but as
a way of conceptualizing the relationship between language, social institutions and indi-
vidual consciousness which focuses on how power is exercised and on the possibilities of
change” (Weedon 1997: 19, emphasis original).
While Weedon’s remarks captures the gist of post-structuralist theories, they also
highlight the possible ways post-structuralism impacts upon feminism. As part of
the continuities of as well as a critique to structuralism, post-structuralism does not
refer to a unified body of theory. Rather, under its umbrella is covered a range of
theoretical positions developed from the work of various theorists that brings
together Marxism, psychoanalysis, feminism and critical social science. This sec-
tion is to make a case for post-structuralist theorization of language, subjectivity
and power. It will also argue that the useful and productive framework offered by
post-structuralism for understanding the mechanisms of power as it is institution-
alized through language and in the making of subjectivity is enabling for us to
attend more readily to the relationship between experience, social power and
resistance, and the mechanisms whereby women and men negotiate and adopt
particular discursive positions as representatives of their identities and interests.
3.1.1 Theorizing Language and Subjectivity
For post-structuralist theories, the basic element on which is based the analysis of
individual consciousness, power, social organization and meanings is language.
The basic idea of post-structuralism on language is that language, rather than
reflecting an already existent social reality, constitutes social reality for us. Neither
social reality nor the natural world has fixed intrinsic meanings which language
reflects or expresses. Different languages and different discourses within the same
language give the world meaning in distinct ways that share no universal concepts
reflecting a fixed reality.
Post-structuralism theorizes subjectivity as a site of disunity and conflict such
that constitutes an opposite position against humanism, which implies a unified
rational subject (Sarup 1993). For post-structuralism, language is the site where
individual subjectivity is constructed. In other words, subjectivity is not innate, not
genetically determined, but socially produced in a whole range of discursive
practices. Language is not the expression of unique individuality; it constructs the
individual’s subjectivity in ways that are socially and historically specific so that
subjectivity is neither unified nor fixed and the meaning of it is a site of constant
struggle over power.
Post-structuralism problematizes the fixing of meaning in the Saussurean sign. It
argues that the concept of signification does not explain the plurality of meaning or
changes in meaning. The post-structuralist answer to the problem is that the sig-
nified of a signifier is never fixed, but is constantly deferred. The primary arguments
are that meaning is constantly moving along the chain of signifiers, and we cannot
3.1 Post-Structuralist Theorization of Language and Subjectivity 31
be precise about its exact location, because it is never tied to one particular sign;
that the effect of signification, in which meaning is fixed, is but a temporary fixing,
because a sign that appears in different contexts is never absolutely the same and the
fixing of meaning in a specific reading of a signifier depends on the discursive
context so that meaning will never stay the same from context to context, but
always open to rereading and redefinition with shifts in its discursive context. The
implication of these is that language is not stable at all. None of its elements is
definable; everything is contingent. As Eagleton explains, “Nothing is ever fully
present in signs. It is an illusion for me to believe that I can ever be fully present to
you in what I say or write, because to use signs at all entails my meaning being
always somehow dispersed, divided and never quite at one with itself. Not only my
meaning, indeed, but I myself: since language is something I am made out of, rather
than a convenient tool I use, the whole idea that I am a stable, unified entity must
also be a fiction” (Eagleton 1983: 130).
The understanding of language that what signifiers mean at any particular
moment depends on the discursive relations within which they are located is highly
relevant to the post-structuralist conceptualization of subjectivity. Since language is
not unified and fixed, and refers to a range of ways of meaning-giving that are
historically specific, it offers individuals various discursive positions through which
to form their subjectivity, which is also historically specific. In other words, just as
Lacan suggests, there could not be a human subject without language; no subject is
independent of language (Lacan 2006). Or as in Cixous’ view, language has the
power to remove the illusion of subjective autonomy and of a unified homogeneous
identity, and writing (especially feminine writing) could explode the fixed cate-
gories of stable identity and create subjectivities that are plural and shifting (quoted
in Shiach 1991: 81).
The contingent nature of language is directly linked to the deconstruction and
contextualization of subjectivity. In line with it, post-structuralism proposes a
subjectivity that is unstable, disunified and always in process, constantly being
reconstructed in discourse each time an individual thinks or speaks. For example,
for feminist psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva (1984), subject is unstable, in process and
constituted in language. She defines a feminine mode of signification that she terms
semiotic that is other to the language of the symbolic order. Together the semiotic
and the symbolic constitute the two modes of signification and are aligned with
femininity and masculinity. Kristeva argues that both aspects of language are open
to all individuals irrespective of their biological sex, but the semiotic is heavily
repressed. The entry of the individual as subject into the symbolic order means the
inevitable repression of the semiotic into the unconscious. However, the repressed
semiotic generates constant challenges and seeks to transform the apparently uni-
tary subject of the symbolic order. While all language is structured by both the
symbolic and the semiotic aspects, the latter is marginalized in an attempt to pre-
serve the apparent stability of the unitary subject and thus to fix the meanings of the
symbolic order. Since the subject is the crucial site for the fixing of meaning,
subjectivity is also a site of potential transformation. That means the subject will
always be a subject in process, only temporarily fixed and constantly being refixed
in language.
The plurality of language and the impossibility of fixing meaning once for all
mean that there is no given universal structure of subjectivity. An individual’s
subjectivity is constituted in language every time s/he speaks, and since language
offers various discursive positions, different discourses provide a range of modes of
subjectivity available to an individual at any time. “At any moment particular
discourses and the institutions and social practices which support them determine
appropriate modes of constituting individuals as subjects, drawing on a range of
ways of addressing the listener,…” (Weedon 1997: 97) “To speak is to assume a
subject position within discourse and to become subjected to the power and reg-
ulation of the discourse” (ibid: 116).
Therefore, the individual is always the site of conflicting forms of subjectivity.
While in principle, the individual is open to all forms of subjectivity, in reality,
individual access to subjectivity is governed by historically specific social factors
and the forms of power at work in a particular society, because language and the
subject positions it offers always exist in historically specific discourses that inhere
in social institutions and practices.
To recognize different types of historically specific subjectivity which are
located in social institutions and practices that constitute and govern subject entails
the need to recognize the relations between forms of subjectivity and discourses,
and discourses and subjectivity as sites of power struggle.
3.1.2 Discourse and Power
The term discourse is one of the most critical yet elusive concepts from
post-structuralist theory. It is critical in the sense that it has become common
currency in a variety of disciplines: linguistics, philosophy, sociology, social psy-
chology, critical theory etc. It is elusive because “[i]t has perhaps the widest range
of possible significations of any term in literary and cultural theory, and yet it is
often the term within theoretical texts which is least defined” (Mills 1997: 1). While
the term enjoys great fluidity in meaning in varied disciplinary contexts and even
within a single discipline, it is Michel Foucault’s work which has been most often
referred to and crucial to the development of a range of theories that build on the
concept “discourse”. It is for this reason that this section will focus primarily on his
work.
Within post-structuralist theory, the use of the term discourse signals a major
break with previous views of language. While it denotes and entails the linguistic
aspect of language, it is more than that simple configuration. Rather than seeing
language as simply transparent and reflective, post-structuralists view language as a
system with its own determining effect on the way individuals think, express
themselves and live consciously.
Foucault has defined discourse in this way:

treating it sometimes as the general domain of all statements, sometimes as an individu-
alizable group of statements, and sometimes as a regulated practice that accounts for a
number of statements. (Foucault 1972: 80)
This quotation includes the range of meanings that the term discourse has within
Foucault’s work, yet also captures the complexity around it. The first definition,
“the general domain of all statements”, means all utterances and texts that have
meaning, force and effect within a social context are discourse. The second defi-
nition, “an individualizable group of statements”, is used to refer to groups of
utterances which appear to have inner coherence and a common theme, such as a
discourse of femininity, a discourse of environmentalism, etc. The third definition
he gives is perhaps the most adopted and discussed: “a regulated practice that
accounts for a number of statements”. Here, what is stressed is no longer the actual
utterances and texts that are produced, but rather the mechanisms which produce
particular utterances and texts. Actually, the most effective way to think about
discourse is to follow the third definition. Foucault (1972) himself has suggested
not to regard discourse as stretches of text, but as “practices that systematically form
the objects of which they speak” (49).
For Foucault, discourses structure our sense of reality, and we can only perceive
the real in such a way as determined by the discursive structures that we have access
to in a given culture. One of Foucault’s (1981) famous quotations about the con-
stitution of objects by discourse is as follows:
We must not imagine that the world turns towards us a legible face which we would have
only to decipher. The world is not the accomplice of our knowledge; there is no predis-
cursive providence which disposes the world in our favour. (67).
This means that the world has no intrinsic order to itself other than the order we
impose upon it through discourse; the only way we comprehend reality is through
discourse. In the process of categorization and interpretation of experience and
events, we are exclusively informed by the discursive structures available to us, and
by conforming to these structures, we in turn make them more solid and normal so
that the discourses appear common sense. For Foucault, these discursive structures
are not the inventions of the institutions or powerful groups of people. Rather, he
considers that they are the results of the combined forces of institutions and culture,
together with the intrinsic structure of discourse (Foucault 1972).
The mechanisms that ensure the circulation of a certain version of reality is the
key element that constitutes discourse, and the word is power. Foucault’s model of
power is revolutionizing in that rather than assuming power is a possession so that
one can take or seize from someone else, or that power is repressive and about
preventing someone from carrying out his/her wishes and limiting people’s free-
dom, or that power relations are determined by economic relations, Foucault sug-
gests that power is a term under which can be summed up the complexity of a range
of practices, and he defines power as:
The multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which
constitute their own organization; as the process which, through ceaseless struggles and
confrontations, transforms, strengthens or reverses them; as the support which these force
relations find in one another, thus forming a chain or a system, or on the contrary, the
disjunctions and contradictions, which isolate them from one another; and lastly, as the
strategies in which they take effect, whose general design or institutional crystallization is
embodied in the state apparatus, in the formulation of the law, in the various social
hegemonies (Foucault 1981: 92).
According to the above terms, power is relation. It is relation in process in that it

exists in difference and is dynamic in control, compliance, or lack of control
between discourses and the subjects constituted by the discourses. Discourses and
counterdiscourses, and contradictory subjectivities are always in constant conflict
and seek to transform the status quo. Finally, power relation may take material
forms, realized in the practices of state institutions, such as prisons, schools, the
workplace and various kinds of social organizations. These institutions discipline
the body, mind and emotions, constituting them according to the needs of certain
forms of power, such as class, race and gender.
For Foucault, the relational nature of and the inherent struggles entailed in power
is what makes it productive. Power is dispersed throughout social relations, and it
produces certain forms of behaviors while restricting others. In The History of
Sexuality, Volume I, Foucault argues for the performative aspect of power; power
should be seen as a verb rather than a noun, something that does something rather
than something which can be possessed. “Power must be analysed as something
which only functions in a form of chain…Power is employed and exercised through
a netlike organization…Individuals are the vehicles of power, not its points of
application” (Foucault 1980: 98). Here again, he argues that power is a set of
relations which are dispersed throughout society rather than being located within
particular institutions. Elsewhere he formulates his idea in the following terms:
I am not referring to Power with a capital P, dominating and imposing its rationality upon
the totality of the social body. In fact, there are power relations. They are multiple; they
have different forms, they can be in play in family relations, or within an institution, or an
administration. (Foucault 1988: 38)
Thus, Foucault portrays power as the major force in all social relations within
society. It is something that is local and negotiated with by individuals, while
individuals constitute places where power can be enacted or resisted.
As has already been suggested above, discourse is regulated by rules which lead
to the distribution and circulation of certain utterances and statements and the
restriction and prohibition of others. That is to say, that certain discourse exists is
because of a complex set of practices which try to keep them in circulation and
other practices which try to keep other discourses out of circulation. Such an
understanding of discourse comes from Foucault’s stress of the association of
discourse with power relations. However, though power is the most crucial con-
stituent, a discourse is not equal to a set of ideas imposed upon individuals. Power
allows resistance and discourses are the site of power struggles. In The History of
Sexuality, Volume I, Foucault states that:
Discourses are not once and for all subservient to power or raised up against it, any more
than silences are. We must make allowances for the complex and unstable process whereby
discourse can be both an instrument and an effect of power, but also a hindrance, a
stumbling block, a point of resistance and a starting point for an opposing strategy.
Discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines it and exposes
it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it. (Foucault 1978: 100–101)
What Foucault is arguing here is that discourse is the means of both oppressing
and resistance. Discourses are the place where power is performed as well as the
place where power is challenged, resisted and transformed. As Mills (2003) states,
“resistance is ‘written in’ to the exercise of power” (Mills 2003: 40).
Yet resistance will not be possible without individual agents. Though Foucault
sees subject as an effect of power and discursively constituted (Foucault 1980: 59),
to be effective, discourses require activation through the agency of the same subject
which they constitute and govern. Subjectivity works most efficiently for the
established hierarchy of power relations in a society when the subject position,
which the individual assumes within a particular discourse, is fully identified by the
individual with his/her interests. Where there is a space between the position of
subject offered by a discourse and individual interest, a resistance to that subject
position is produced. Thus, social power struggle involves heavily the discursive
constitution of subjects, both compliant and resistant. Thus, as Weedon puts it,
“discourses, located as they are in social institutions and processes, are continually
competing with each other for the allegiance of individual agents” (Weedon 1997:
93). Such position means that individuals are not mere objects of language, but the
sites of discursive power struggle. Individuals may resist particular subjectivity and
produce new versions of meaning from the conflicts and contradictions between
existing discourses. To understand that there is more than one discourse and that
meaning is plural allows individuals possibility to make choice. It is this under-
standing and knowledge of the relationship among discourse, power and subjec-
tivity that informs the conceptualization of gender and the studies of gender and
language which is to be discussed in the following section.
3.2 Theorizing Gender From Post-structuralist

Perspective
For studies that concern the interplay between language and the specific human
identity of gender, the poststructuralist conceptualizations of subjectivity, language
and power as discussed above are important. As Sunderland (2006) suggests,
“post-structuralism has provided a major challenge to essentialist notions of gender
and has been crucial in the developing understanding of gender” (Sunderland 2006:
27). Already a “discourse turn” (Weatherall 2002, Eckert and McConnell-Ginet
2003) has emerged in the field of gender and language studies to “facilitate the
study of the complex and often subtle ways in which gender identities are repre-
sented, constructed and contested through language” (Sunderland and Litisseliti
2002: 1). This section theorizes gender subjectivity as construction in discourse and
asserts the relevance of power and non-linguistic social practices to the construction
of gender.
3.2.1 Theorizing Gender
As an analytic category that is used to draw a line of demarcation from the concept
of biological sex, gender come to be understand as a social and cultural concept that
denotes behaviors. The purpose of differentiating between “sex” and “gender” is to
demystify the naturalization of biologically determined gender traits, especially
those attributed typically to women. Second wave feminists criticized that the actual
physical and mental effects of biological difference between women and men had
been exaggerated to the extent that the culturally conditioned traits found in women
and men are regarded as biologically determined. The purpose of this exaggeration,
as they see, is to maintain and justify the unequal and unjust treatment of women
and to create a consciousness in women that they are naturally better suited to
certain roles and functions. To propose the notion of gender as a social and cultural
construct rather than something homogenous with biology was important for
feminists in the 1970s since such an understanding of the differences between
women and men being socially and culturally learned, mediated and constructed
means that gender suggests opportunities of making resistance and change, both on
the individual and the social level. Starting from the vantage point, feminisms in the
second wave aimed to undermine patriarchal culture and social structure, to correct
the distortion and devaluation of feminine characteristics and reappraise these
characteristics, and to integrate the recognition of sex discrimination with claim of
justice and equality.
However, since the overlap in any women/man contrast is inevitable, the dif-
ferences between them are not absolutes, and specific behavioral differences are
likely to be situational, local and related to a particular “Community of Practice”
(CofP) (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1992). That means that though social con-
struction of gender seems to be a notion more advanced than biological determi-
nation, it still implies a certain degree of determinism and an ultimate absolute
difference. Whether gender is seen as elaboration of biological sex or as symbolic of
it, the collocation of gender with difference means that even understood as a social
and cultural construct, gender is still simply mapped onto sex. This lead to circular
arguments where researcher “maps talk onto the gender identity of the speaker,
measures gender differences in talk, and then uses gender as the explanatory
variable to account for those differences” (Speer 2002: 348). The presupposition for
the quest for differences is that gender is something one is or has, “a limited and
limiting understanding” (Sunderland 2004: 16), especially when it is now widely
accepted that any gender differences in language use are not only local, but also
mediated (Mills and Mullany 2011, Sunderland 2004, Talbot 1998). It was thus felt
that such an understanding of gender as differences and as opposition should be
3.2 Theorizing Gender From Post-structuralist Perspective 37
deconstructed, not least because its effects often run counter to the interests of
women. As Jackson and Scott (2001) states about the gender/sex distinction:
We…are skeptical of leaving any space for “difference” which is not by definition social or
cultural. The categories “men” and “women” are social categories and the “recognition” of
biological “sex differences” on which this distinction seems to rest is itself a social and
cultural practice. (Jackson and Scott 2001: 10)
With the post-modern concern for identity, claims about global gender differ-
ences and the generalizations of local findings based on one group of people
(usually Western white women) to others were increasingly felt to be both lacking
and inadequate. Third Wave feminism, which has been developed out of contes-
tation for the fundamental principles of feminist project, reconceptualizes the cat-
egory of women, challenging the concept of a unified identity and endorsing a
dynamic gender identity in its plural form (Weedon 1997; Butler 1999). As Mary
Bucholtz (1999a) points out, “gender identity is at once more specific than most
1970s feminism realized and more fluid than much 1980s feminism allowed”
(Bucholtz 1999a: 4). Within the Third Wave framework, researchers have moved
away from a reliance on binary oppositions and global statements about the
behaviors of all men and all women, to more detailed and moderated statements
about certain groups of women or men in particular circumstances, who reaffirm,
negotiate with and challenge the parameters of permissible or socially sanctioned
behavior (Coates and Cameron 1989; Bergvall et al. 1996; Wodak 1997; Johnson
and Meinhoff 1997). For these researchers, gender is not a possession or set of
behaviors which is imposed upon the individual by society, a view many essen-
tialist theorists have previously taken, but rather something which is enacted or
performed (Butler 1999), something that “emerge[s] from discourse” (Bucholtz
1999a: 4), a “process… an idea, or set of ideas, articulated in and as discourse”
(Sunderland 2004: 18), and thus a potential site of struggle over restrictions in roles.
Masculinity and femininity are viewed as both contingent and fluid, which results in
a potential multiplicity of gender identity for a given individual, meaning that the
plural forms of identities, masculinities and femininities, can be used to refer to
individuals. Edley (2001) explains the potential multiplicity as follows: subject
positions, “location” within a conversation, are the identities made relevant by
specific ways of talking, and
because those ways of talking can change both within and between conversations (i.e. as
different discourses or interpretative repertoires are employed) then, in some sense at least,
so too do the identities of the speakers. (Edley 2001: 210)
Many Third Wave feminist studies draw on/adapt the work of Michel Foucault,
particularly his notions of subject, power and discourse which have been discussed
in the previous section of the chapter, or that of Judith Butler with her notion of
performativity, who has been largely regarded as post-structuralist. Chris Weedon
(1997) proposes a post-structuralist theoretical framework for feminism, based
especially on Foucault’s theory of discourse and power. She argues that instead of
assuming the unitary nature of the subject and subjectivity as other types of
feminism had done, it is more useful to see gender subjectivity as discursively

constituted, the effect of power and in process. Foucault’s work offers feminists the
concept of contextualization of experience and a conscious analysis of its consti-
tution. Thus, for Weedon, what feminist post-structuralism should be concerned
with is the historically and socially specific discursive production of conflicting and
competing meanings and subjectivities. Such awareness of the uncertainty of
gender subjectivity, Weedon argued, is the first step towards challenging the social
structure that is loaded against women’s interests.
Post-structuralist feminism requires attention to historical specificity in the production, for
women, of subject positions and modes of femininity and their place in the overall network
of social power relations. In the process of constituting subjectivity, the meaning of bio-
logical sexual difference is never finally fixed. It is a site of contest over meaning and the
exercise of patriarchal power. This discursive contest, in which women can resist particular
meanings and power relations, is subject to historical change. An understanding of how
discourses of biological sexual difference are mobilized, in a particular society, at a par-
ticular moment, is the first stage in intervening in order to initiate change. (Weedon 1997:
131)
Influenced to a considerable extent by Foucault and post-structuralism, Butler

postulates the concept of gender performativity (Butler 1993, 1999, 2004) where
gender is viewed as a verb, something that one does in interaction than something
which one possesses. Butler developed her notion of gender performativity by
drawing upon both the concept of performativity from speech-act theory and
Althusser’s idea of how particular ways of using language constitute an individual.
Therefore, gender is not a given, but rather something that we have to perform
constantly: gender is a “doing, an incessant activity performed” (Butler 2004: 1). It
is constructed through repeated gendered acts and varies as the context changes. In
Butler’s work,
[g]ender is held to be a significatory practice in which acts are to be understood through
linguistic concepts and in which gender subjectivities and identifications are produced and
acquire the hardness of gender ontologies in the process of their own reiterated citationality.
(Hood-Williams and Harrison 1998: 84)
In Gender Trouble, Butler defines gender as “the repeated stylization of the

body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over
time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being” (Butler
1999: 45). “Even when gender seems to congeal into the most reified forms, the
‘congealing’ is itself an insistent and insidious practice, sustained and regulated by
various social means.” (ibid, emphasis added) She argues that “the ‘being’ of
gender is an effect” of “certain cultural configuration” and that “woman itself is a
term in process, a becoming, constructing…an ongoing discursive practice” (ibid,
emphasis original).
Because there is neither an “essence” that gender expresses or externalizes nor an objective
ideal to which gender aspires, and because gender is not a fact, the various acts of gender
create the idea of gender, and without those acts, there would be no gender at all. (ibid: 190)
Therefore, gender is a kind of enforced cultural performance, compelled by

compulsory heterosexuality, and rather than some inner core and pre-given essence,
the performance of gender produces the illusion of such a core or essence. The
gender performance is a “sustained social” kind (ibid: 192) which involves the
“ritualized repetition of conventions” (ibid) and which is constrained and “com-
pelled by social sanction and taboo” (Butler 1988: 520). That is, though the term
performance might hind a kind of free choice, individuals are actually constrained
and limited to the possibilities available to them within certain communities. The
interactionality of gender performance also means that gender identity is created
and contained within social groups rather than put on like a costume by individuals.
“A gendered dimension to interations emerges rather than being assumes at the
outset.” (Holmes and Meyerhoff 2003: 9, emphasis added) Although individuals are
sexed as males and females, and that their way of perceiving themselves is affected
by it, it is largely through interaction that one begins to sense what sort of man or
woman it is possible to be within a particular context. It is largely the notes that an
individual picks up from the context that will inform them of the approved or
favored ways to perform particular types of gender identities. Admittedly, in reality,
there are individuals who will react against the stereotypical expectations of the
group. Yet nevertheless, the expectations of others within a community exert a great
impact upon how one may construct oneself in terms of gender identity. In other
words, institutional and contextual constraints are always there to determine the
type and form of identity and linguistic routines which an individual considers
appropriate or possible within an interactional context.
For Butler, gender is negotiated by individuals in their performance of their
identities. This performativity is a constant process rather than something that could
be achieved once and for all.
If gender is something that one becomes—but can never be—then gender is itself a kind of
becoming or activity, and that gender ought not to be conceived as a noun or a substantial
thing or a static cultural marker, but rather as an incessant and repeated action of some sort.
(Butler 1999: 152)
That this reiteration is necessary is a sign that materialization is never quite complete, that
bodies never quite comply with the norms by which their materialization is impelled.
(Butler 1993: 2)
Thus, although individuals cannot freely create themselves, and can only
negotiate their gender identity with the styles of language available to them within a
specific communicative context, possibility for resistance and change does exist. It
is in the course of repetition of the gendered acts that individuals could attempt
subversions. “In its very character as performative resides the possibility of con-
testing its reified status” (Butler 1988: 520).
Although gender is practiced and not pre-given, it is substantial rather than an
illusion, as integral to larger social structures. Drawing on Butler’s work, Eckert
and McConnell-Ginet (2003) define gender in the following way:
Gender is not a part of one’s essence, what one is, but an achievement, what one does.
Gender is a set of practices through which people construct and claim identities, not simply
a system of categorizing people. And gender practices are not only about establishing
identities but also about managing social relations. (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 2003:
305)
The relational view of gender in Eckert and McConnell-Ginet’s definition is

relevant to a third wave feminist concern with the way to keep a balance between a
focus on the local negotiation and performance of gender and the largely imposed
social structures. Indeed, in Butler’s terms, this view is expressed as: “in saying that
gender is performance we are not saying that it is not real. We are saying, rather,
that this personal reality comes not from within, but from our participation in the
global performance that is the social order.” (Butler 1993: 321) In reference to
“global” performance, not only is denied the possibility for an individual to freely
choose gender identity with or without regard to the specific communicative con-
text, but the relation between gender and the wider society as well as the institu-
tionalizing effect of the social system upon gender is also argued for.
Third Wave feminists’ questioning of gender does not mean that they believe
that there is no such thing as gender difference. As Freed (1996) argues, in spite of
the fact that the category “woman” is not one which is homogeneous, that does not
prevent people from classifying one as a woman and making judgments about them
on the basis of the classification (Freed 1996: 69–70). McElhinny (2003) points out
that Third Wave feminist analysis would “investigate how categories such as
‘woman’ are created and which political interests the creation and perpetuation of
certain identities and distinctions serves” (McElhinny 2003: 24). What is ques-
tioned and reconceptualized is the simple binary opposition between female and
male as well as the system which operates in stereotypes and assumptions which
have material impact on what is considered to be appropriate gender behaviors.
Bucholtz (1999a) characterizes the theorization of gender within Third Wave so
eloquently in the following way:
Language users’ identities are not essential to their natures but are produced through
contingent social interactions; …those identities are inflected by ideologies of gender and
other social constructs; …speakers, writers and signers respond to these ideologies through
practices that sometimes challenge and sometimes reproduce dominant beliefs; and… as
new social resources become available, language users enact and produce new identities,
themselves temporary and historical, that assign new meanings to gender. (Bucholtz 1999a:
20)
A combination between local and global focus upon gender behaviors and their
interpretations involves theorizing gender together with context, discourse and
power, which is discussed in the following sections.
3.2.2 Gender and Context
It is generally accepted that meaning is contextual, even “radically contextual”

(Cameron 1992: 192, emphasis original). Within the field of gender and language
study, the importance of context was acknowledged in the 1970s with the recog-
nition that the way women were dominated by men through language in certain
ways had to be related to the specific factors of the context of interaction. For
example, O’Barr and Atkins’ (1980) work on courtroom discourse demonstrates the
ways in which professional status intersects with gender in terms of the content of
speech. They argued that what had been considered “women’s language” could
largely be defined as “powerless language” and showed that this style of language
use was evident in the talk of those on trial, but not in that of the members of the
legal profession, be they men or women. Contextual factors are also important for
understanding the origin of the difference between men and women in terms of
linguistic behaviors. Deborah Tannen (1991) claims that girls and boys grow up to a
large extent in single-sex groups, and that these apparently very different, formative
contexts entail different linguistic practices to which different tendencies in the
language use by adult men and women can be attributed.
Context can include linguistic co-text, genre, social situation, which includes the
specific relations between participants and the specific physical considerations, and
cultural assumptions. According to Fairclough (1992), the context of a given text
includes those discursive practices which are relevant to the text in question, and the
relevant social practices. Looking at context entails a concern with specificity and
complexity (Cameron 1998b; Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1992). Specificity, as
regards gender, means looking at particular men and women in particular settings,
while complexity refers to the way in which gender interacts with other identities,
such as ethnicity, age, class, and so on so forth, and with power relations.
3.2.3 Gender and Power
The crucial role that power relations play within feminist research has been widely
acknowledged. Second Wave feminists tended to see power as something which
was restrictive and which was imposed upon individuals. During the Third Wave,
however, it is Foucault’s work that is largely drawn upon to describe the ways in
which power relations work and how they can be conceptualized. Taking a
Foucauldian perspective, Third Wave feminist researchers tend to view power as a
“web”, rather than as a possession that an individual has (Baxter 2003; Mills 2003;
Mullany 2007). As has already been discussed in the previous section, power in
Foucauldian theory is conceptualized as something that is fluid and needs to be
enacted and contested in every interaction, something that is material and an
everyday element, manifesting itself in everyday experience.
As a consequence of this conceptualization of power, a focus upon the local

management of power relations is developed, that is, the way that individuals
negotiate with the status which they have been allocated or which they have
managed to achieve, and which within particular contexts they can contest or affirm,
through their use of language and through their behaviors. Many feminist theorists
draw a distinction between a “fixed” institutional status, that is, the status which
individuals are allotted through positions within an institution, often represented by
a particular title, and a “local” status, that is, the position that individuals manage to
negotiate because of, to a great extent, their personal social skills. While these two
types of status are clearly interconnected, it is now often the local, enacted status
which is focused on by Third Wave feminist theorists in general (Diamond 1996)
and linguistics researchers in particular (Baxter 2003; Mills 2003; Mullany 2007).
Cameron (1998a) argues that a useful approach to the analysis of power and
gender is to focus less on unchanging, unequal relations between men and women
but rather on the resources available to speakers in particular positions to draw upon
strategically. The advantages of this approach are as follows:
[It] treats the structural fact of gender hierarchy not as something that must inevitably show
up in surface features of discourse, but as something that participants in any particular
conversation may, or may not, treat as relevant to the interpretation of utterances.
Furthermore, it insists that where assumptions about gender and power are relevant, they take
a form that is context-specific and connected to local forms of social relations: however well
founded they may be in structural political terms, global assumptions of male dominance and
female subordination are too vague to generate specific inferences in particular contexts, and
thus are insufficient for the purposes of discourse analysis. (Cameron 1998a: 452)
With the change in research focus concerning power, there has been a move
away from the analysis of subordinated women. Bucholtz (1999a) argues that
previously “much of the scholarship in language and gender has been what might
be called ‘good-girl research’—studies of ‘good’ (that is normatively female—
white straight middle-class) women being ‘good’ (that is normatively feminine)
(Bucholtz 1999a: 13). Now rather than analyzing women’s indirectness or lack of
assertiveness, many linguists focus on strong women speakers and women’s
resistance to masculine forms of speech such as interruption or aggressiveness
(Sznycer 2010; Bucholtz 1999a; Lazar 2005).
Many earlier Second Wave studies on the relationship among language, power
and gender are now reviewed somewhat negatively by researchers who adopt a
post-structuralist perspective partly because of the assumption behind these studies
is invariably that there is a simple relation among them. Although it might be
possible to make generalizations about the styles of language which will be pro-
duced when there are differences of power, from a post-structuralist perspective,
there could not be a simple link between, say, interruption and power difference
(Thornborrow 2002). One corrective effort to the earlier studies which are felt to be
limiting and limited is Eckert and McConnell-Ginet’s (2003) focus on the way that
individuals can come to understand their position in the pecking order in a group
through the way that their contributions to be ongoing talk are responded to.
Following is their terms:
A person’s contribution to an ongoing discussion is determined not simply by the utterance

the person produces, but by the ways in which that utterance is received and interpreted by
others in the conversation. Beyond that conversation, the force of an utterance depends on
what people do with it in subsequent interactions. Is it quoted? Is it ignored or disparaged?
How is it interpreted? The force of an utterance is not manifest in the utterance itself, but in
its fate once it is launched into the discourse/once it begins its “discursive life”. (Eckert and
McConnell-Ginet 2003: 92)
The view of power as illustrated by the above mentioned is clearly different from
Second Wave feminist analysis of oppression. Although such strategy as inter-
ruption is regarded in gender and language research in the 1970s and 1980s as a
clear demonstration of male power and oppression against women (Zimmerman
and West 1975; Tannen 1984, 1989), Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (2003) point out
that this seemingly powerful conversation strategy may in reality not be very
effective:
People who interrupt constantly…may not necessarily become powerful, but they render (at
least temporarily) powerless those they interrupt. The raw display of power in interruption,
though, is a very immediate form of domination and as such is easily recognized. And with
recognition comes a loss of that very power. The person with the greatest power is the
person who does not “have to” interrupt the person to whom others ceded the floor will-
ingly, and interruption can suggest not so much dominance itself but a need to establish
dominance. (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 2003: 114)
What Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (2003) have shown is that simply using
language styles which aspire to power is not equal to being powerful. It would be
more appropriate to interpret such strategy as a way of negotiating with power for
personal identity.
To do material investigation of the relationships between gender identities and
context, discourse and power, and to reveal the effect of contextual and discursive
factors upon gender construction and the power relation that is negotiated, one
useful approach is critical discourse analysis. Given its concern with power rela-
tions, and its research focus on the “the dramatic problems in economy and society”
(Fairclough 2001: 229) which include, not the least, the problem of gender identity
and gender relations, “CDA would thus seem to be theoretically well placed to seek
and identify gendered discourses of a damaging kind” (Sunderland 2006: 51).
3.3 Critical Discourse Analysis as Analytic Framework
3.3.1 Why CDA
“With its critiques of the workings of power and dominance, CDA might appear
initially to be the most ‘obvious’ approach to feminist gender and language study.”
(Sunderland 2006: 59) Indeed, the linguistic sub-discipline of Critical Discourse
Analysis (CDA) is one of the theoretical approaches which researchers engaged in
gender and language studies commonly draw on (Mills and Mullany 2011;
Sunderland 2006; Wodak 1997; Baxter 2003). The reason for the happy marriage
between gender studies in general, gender and language studies in particular, and
CDA perhaps is most efficiently summarized by Wodak (1997): “Many proposals
and basic assumptions of feminist linguistics relate to and overlap with principles of
critical linguistics and critical discourse analysis” (Wodak 1997: 3).
The importance of CDA for gender and language studies lies largely in its
critical perspective on the complex workings of power and ideology in discourse in
sustaining an unequal gendered social order. For those who identify with a distinct
CDA position, they believe that it is useful for feminism because of its “overtly
political stance” and its concern with “all forms of social inequality and injustice”
(Lazar 2005: 2). Lazar (2005) argues that feminist language study that takes a CDA
perspective is “a critical perspective on unequal social arrangements sustained
through language use, with the goals of social transformation and emancipation”
(Lazar 2005: 1). For other researchers, especially those engaged in language and
gender studies that choose not to explicitly identify themselves as critical discourse
analysts, the advantage of working with a CDA perspective is that it “offers a
sophisticated theorization of the relationship between social practices and discourse
structure…and a wide range of tools and strategies for close analysis of actual,
contextualized uses of language” (ibid: 4).
The present study adopts the framework of CDA proposed by Fairclough (1989,
1992, 1995) out of the following considerations. First, it is because CDA, closely
related with the feminist approach in women’s studies (van Dijk 1993) and been
repeatedly proved to be useful in demystifying the interrelationships of gender,
power and ideology in discourse, is equally applicable to the study of talk as well as
texts, translated texts necessarily included, which “offers a corrective to approaches
that primarily favour one linguistic mode over another” (Lazar 2005: 5). Second,
since “the beliefs that are put forth in the texts of greatest interest to critical
discourse analysts are those that encourage the acceptance of unequal arrangements
of power as natural and inevitable, perhaps even as right and good” (Talbot, cited in
Mills and Mullany 2011: 78), CDA would be useful in raising awareness towards
texts that are involved in gendered discourses in an insidious and surreptitious way.
A third consideration is that because CDA offers research methodology and tools
that facilitate the exploration of the subtle forms in contemporary period of the
workings of gender ideology and power relations in discourse and the discursive
strategies employed in various, largely implicit, forms of social oppression and
stereotyping both in talk and texts. Last but not least, as Fairclough (1992) suggests,
while post-structuralist theorization of discourse, power and subjectivity is made on
a rather abstract basis with a rare concern for actual and concrete language texts,
which reduces it to undesirable feasibility when applied to actual linguistic analysis
of spoken or written texts, CDA as “textually- (and therefore linguistically-) ori-
ented discourse analysis” (Fairclough 1992: 37) provides the ready way “of putting
Foucault’s perspective to work” (Courtine, quoted in Fairclough 1992: 38). Sharing
substantive claims with Foucaultian post-structuralism in terms of the nature of
discourse and power and their dialectical relation, CDA offers various tools and
3.3 Critical Discourse Analysis as Analytic Framework 45
strategies to operationalize these concepts, accounting for the relationship between

linguistic practices and social structure, and providing linguistically material
explanations for the interconnectedness among them.
3.3.2 Tenets of CDA
Since the late 1970s, around some basic assumptions has been developed a range of
“trends” or “approaches” within the broad term of CDA, each having its own main
research agenda (Wodak 2001, 2006; Fairclough and Wodak 1997), such as social
semiotics, the socio-cognitive model and discourse-historical approach etc. (Wodak
2006: 7–19) Among these different sub-frameworks, it is the discourse-historical
model represented by Fairclough that will be taken for the present study. The
discourse-historical approach makes systematical integration of available back-
ground information in the analysis and interpretation of layers of texts, enables the
analysis of implicit prejudiced utterances and the identification and exposure of
prejudiced discourses. Besides, this model applies chiefly in studies of sexism,
racism and prejudices (ibid).
The starting point of CDA (if not specified, for what will be followed, CDA
refers to Fairclough’s model rather than other parallel models under the umbrella
term Critical Discourse Analysis) is to view “discourse…as a form of ‘social
practice’” (Fairclough and Wodak 1997: 258).
Describing discourse as social practice implies a dialectical relationship between a par-
ticular discursive event and the situation(s), institution(s) and social structure(s), which
frame it: The discursive event is shaped by them, but it also shapes them. That is, discourse
is socially constitutive as well as socially conditioned – it constitutes situations, objects of
knowledge, and the social identities of and relationships between people and groups of
people. It is constitutive both in the sense that it helps to sustain and reproduce the social
status quo, and in the sense that it contributes to transforming it. Since discourse is so
socially consequential, it gives rise to important issues of power. Discursive practices may
have major ideological effects – that is, they can help produce and reproduce unequal power
relations between (for instance) social classes, women and men, and ethnic/cultural
majorities and minorities through the ways in which they represent things and position
people. (Fairclough and Wodak 1997: 258)
Fairclough’s idea of discourse is best known as Fig. 3.1.

Figure 3.1 represents the different senses of discourse, encapsulating language
use as a form of social practice. In the center is the text which can be either spoken
or written. Except for formal features, the text contains nothing else. Yet these
features, grammar, vocabulary and so on, are traces of how it is produced. They are
also clues for how it can be interpreted. How a particular listener or reader interprets
the text depends on what resources s/he has access to for interpretation, such as, the
most basic, they must understand the language used. This emphasis of the need for
resources suggests influence from post-structuralism and it denies thinking of texts
as if they have fixed meanings independent of the social context they circulate in.
TEXT
(traces/cues)
DISCURSIVE PRACTICES (processes

for producing/interpreting)
SOCIAL PRACTICE
Fig. 3.1 Three-dimensional conception of discourse (Fairclough 1992: 73)
The meaning is not already there in the text, but rather the text is only meaning
potential. It gets meaning when people interpret it and the meaning it gets will vary
from person to person.
A text is placed inside discursive practice because it is integral of the activity of
discourse on particular occasions. Discursive practices involve both texts and the
processes of people producing and interpreting them. The process of interpretation
relies on reader/listener’s specific knowledge relevant to the discursive practices
that they bring with them as resources so that the kind of discursive practice they
are engaged in imposes one meaning rather than others. Texts construct reading
positions, through the formal features which are actually constraints on what it can
mean though, which actual readers have to negotiate with, although whether they
accept them depends very much on their background information. This can be
illustrated in the case of women’s magazine, which tends to be targeted precisely at
specific readership. Expressions like “when you are trying your hardest to hide
those fine wrinkles around the eyes…” contain textual cues to presupposed ideas,
namely, there are such things as “fine wrinkles around eyes” and that “you” try to
hide them. The reader is set up, or subject positioned, as someone who entertains
these ideas.
In the figure, discursive practice is represented within social practice. This is to
indicate that discourse is a form of social practice and that language use is a social
act. Viewing discourse as social practice means the broader social context must be
taken into consideration in discourse analysis, that is to say, “the relationship
between texts, processes, and their social conditions, both the immediate conditions
of the situational context and the more remote conditions of institutional and social
structures” (Fairclough 1989: 26). In other words, the society and history in which
discourse takes place must be attended to.
3.3 Critical Discourse Analysis as Analytic Framework 47
This conception of discourse provides a valuable framework for studying lan-

guage and gender because it foregrounds the social nature of any discourse,
counteracting the tendency of treating experiences as though they occur indepen-
dently of society and overcoming the sense of naturalness that everyday language
may impress us with.
Another important concept proposed by Fairclough (1992) is interdiscursivity.
For CDA, the analysis of discourse can hardly be a straightforward task because
discourse does not denote bounded texts with purely linguistic features. The issue
meant here are the concepts of intertextuality and interdiscursivity. A given dis-
course always has linkages to others in both synchronic and diachronic dimensions.
Diachronically, “with each word spoken, the meanings within particular discourses
are carried through time” (Peterson 2002: 352). Synchronically, similar and dif-
ferent discourses stand in relation to each other. Intertextuality may refer to a
“manifest” kind (Fairclough 1992: 85), i.e., direct reported speech and use of
extracts in one text from other texts. It may also refer to a “constitutive” kind, which
is also called “interdiscursivity” (ibid), meaning the “mixing together of different
discourses and genres” (Fairclough 1992). Thus, discourses are endlessly forming
relationships among them by taking on the characteristics of one another, shaping
and being shaped by one another. When several discourses are produced in the
same text, these discourses are regarded as contradictory and competing. This
“jostling” together of discourses within one text or talk is of interest to CDA
because contradictions may imply struggles over power negotiations, identity
negotiations or intentions to strive for change, and because it creates room for
contestation in the form of challenge to the speaker or writer who contradicts him or
herself.
3.3.3 Stages of Critical Discourse Analysis
Corresponding to the three dimensions of discourse, Fairclough (1989: 26) pro-

poses three stages for carrying out critical discourse analysis. They are:
(1) description, concerned with formal properties of the text;
(2) interpretation, concerned with the relationship between text and interaction—
with seeing the text as the product of a process of production, and as a resource
in the process of interpretation;
(3) explanation, concerned with the relationship between interaction and social
context—with the social determination of the processes of production and
interpretation, and their social effects.
Fairclough discusses the relationship between the three stages based on the three
dimensional concept of discourse. Generally, description needs to be complemented
with interpretation and explanation so as to reveal the social values or significance
associated with texts. Formal features of texts have values that are connected with
social practice which is constrained by social structures and relations of power.

However, one cannot directly extrapolate from the formal features of a text to the
social structures which constitute society. “The relationship between text and social
structures is an indirect mediated one.” (Fairclough 1989: 140) The relationship is
mediated by double layers of contexts. The first is the discourse which the text is
part of, because “the values of textual features only become real, socially operative,
if they are embedded in social interaction” (ibid) which is the discursive processes
of production and interpretation of texts against a background of common-sense
assumptions that give textual features their values. The second is the social context
of the discourse because “the discourses in which these values are embedded
themselves only become real, socially operative, as parts of institutional and
societal processes of struggle” and because “the common-sense assumptions of
discourse incorporate ideologies which accord with particular power relations”
(ibid: 140–141). While the second stage of interpretation is concerned with the
discursive processes, the third stage of explanation is concerned with the rela-
tionship of discourses to social power struggle and relations.
Fairclough (ibid: 110–112) lists points for the analysis associated with the
description stage, which appear like a mini reference manual. However, as he
himself has realized, his list cannot be taken as a blueprint; it is only a guide to
orient the researchers so that researchers may omit or add other features as necessity
arises. According to the guide, to analyze the formal features of a given text,
researchers are recommended to focus on the vocabulary, grammar and textual
structure.
In line with the research model of CDA introduced above, the present study will
carry out textual analysis in the following aspects: the specific linguistic elements
expressing modalities and those having pragmatic functions will be investigated at
lexical level; the neutral passive form BE + V-en and THERE-BE structure will be
the specific points to be focused upon for exploring grammatical features; trans-
lator’s mediation in the forms of omission, prefacing and footnoting etc. are where
attention is directed in terms of textual structure. Detailed introduction to these
features will be given in chapter five.
3.4 Summary
Under the influence of the post-structuralist conceptualization of language, sub-

jectivity and power, studies at the interface between language and gender undergo a
“discourse turn” where the complex and often subtle ways in which gender iden-
tities are constructed and contested in discourses are focused upon. From the dis-
course perspective, gender is no longer a stable and essential identity of an
individual based on heterosexuality. Rather, it is plural and dynamic, the result of
negotiations and performance of women and men in particular contexts through
interactions. The successful construction and performance of a certain gender
identity is also the result of power struggle and negotiation.
3.4 Summary 49
A useful approach to the investigation of the relationships between gender

identities and context, discourse and power, and of the effects of contextual and
discursive factors upon gender construction is critical discourse analysis. CDA’s
critiques of the workings of power and dominance in society render it an appro-
priate and handy tool to explore gendered discourses.
In what follows, concepts such as language, discourse, subjectivity, gender and
power will be applied in the senses of what are introduced in this chapter. The term
discourse will recur throughout, integrating both senses of microanalysis of specific
textual elements and of the macroanalysis in a Foucaultian sense. Meanwhile, the
stages of analysis proposed in CDA will be what inform the processes of data
analysis and discussion. That is, the case study will follow the stages of description,
interpretation and explanation to query the manners of the translators’ gender
performance, unveil the discursive processes and explore the social context which
are determinative of the performance.
A generalization of how the theoretical framework is applied to the case study
following is in order here. To begin with, it is assumed that disunity of translators’
gender subjectivity is revealed if contradictory discourses appear in the translated
texts. Translation on the one hand is a discourse in the same sense as other dis-
courses such as workplace conversation so that it allows linguistic space in the same
way as other discourses for translators (individuals) to perform gender. On the
other, because translation is essentially representative of an original, mediated by
individual agency and therefore restricted to a considerable extent in nature and
because translators have agency, the process of representation and mediation that is
entailed by translation as a unique channel of communication opens up more
opportunity for them to implement resistance to or reinforcement of existent gender
power relation. However, no matter how unique the channel is, the translation
discourse, in the same way as other linguistic discourses, is determined by still
larger social processes which involve this or that kind of social power struggle such
as that between women and men. In the following chapters, translation as a lin-
guistic space for gender construction as well as mediation and modification for
gender representation will be investigated so as to reveal the (dis)unity of the
translators’ gender identities. The social discourses that produce the (dis)unified
gender identities will be traced as any gender subjectivity is believed to be produced
in socially and historically specific context.
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Chapter 4
Methodology
This chapter will first introduce the methodological basis. That the theories that the
study is based upon, as elaborated in the previous chapter, require crucial attention
to the linkage between actual linguistic features and wider social context and to
interpretation of the textual as against the social and historical entails a combination
of microscopic and macroscopic analysis approach. The tool of corpus is introduced
as the practical interface combining the microscopic and macroscopic analyses
while CDA provides the theoretical interface to connect the linguistic with the
contextual and the social. Then, the procedure for conducting the study is outlined
on a step-by-step basis. The investigation of the translations will be carried out in
two directions, both the language use of the translators, which involves mapping the
target texts onto the source, and the representation of male and female characters in
the translations, which requires aligning the source text with the target texts, an
opposite direction of operation to the former. What is given most emphasis is the
justification for the selection of the texts and the validity of the linguistic features
which constitute the actual clues for representing the gender construction of the
translators through language use. The chapter will also comment on some issues
surrounding using corpus to study translation and gender and researcher’s
subjectivity.
4.1 Methodological Basis
4.1.1 Macroscopic and Microscopic Analysis
Tymoczko (2007) argues for the connections of “two infinite orders” in translation
studies, namely, the linguistic and the cultural perspectives. She says,
If large translation effects investigated by cultural studies approaches to translation are the
result of small word-by-word, sentence-by-sentence and text-by-text decisions by

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3720-8_4
54 4 Methodology
translators that can be analyzed with contemporary linguistic tools, then research methods
in translation studies will generally benefit from connecting those two realms. (Tymoczko
2007: 14–15)
If one’s hypothesis is valid, the different perspectives associated with different orders of
magnitude should mutually reinforce each other, acting as confirmation and substantiation
of one’s conclusions. (ibid: 24)
Within the broad scope of investigation into the interplay between gender,
language and translation, researchers have been conducting exploration through
both macroscopic and microscopic analyses, the “two infinite orders”. Macroscopic
analysis attempts to define gender as socio-political issues in translation and
translation theories and relevant to discourses related to translation. Microscopic
analysis, on the other hand, provides detailed descriptions of the communicative
and constructive functions of particular linguistic features that are explicitly or
discursively gendered.
Both macroscopic and microscopic analyses that bring together the issues of
gender and translation have been reviewed in chapter two and will not be discussed
here again. What need to be highlighted, however, are the complementary strengths
and weaknesses of both approaches. To start with, microscopic text analysis is
necessary to pinpoint the exact functions of individual linguistic features which
have or may carry gender forces. It complements macroscopic analysis in two ways:
(1) it identifies the potentially important linguistic features to be included in a macro
analysis, and (2) it provides detailed functional analyses of individual linguistic
features, which enable interpretation of the textual dimension in functional terms.
Microscopic analysis, however, is unable to identify the overall parameters of
linguistic gender performance within texts of considerable length because it is
restricted to analysis of few linguistic features collected through manual work.
In contrast, macroscopic analyses are needed to interpret the underlying con-
textual dimensions of a given text, enabling an overall account of mode(s) of gender
performance in discourse and providing a framework for discussion of such per-
formance and the interplay between gender, language and the larger discursive
field. Macro analysis is restricted, however, in the sense that it overlooks relatively
detailed parameters of gender performance in a text and relies on form-to-function
correlations established in microanalysis for support.
Therefore, these two approaches to studies on gender, language and translation
are mutually complementary. Macro analysis depends on microanalysis for the
identification and functional interpretation of potentially important gendered lin-
guistic features, while microanalysis benefits from the overall theoretical framework
provided by macro analysis. In other words, the choice of texts and linguistic
features which are deemed as deserving detailed microanalysis will be informed by
knowledge of the underlying discursive dimensions beyond a particular text or set
of texts.
Drawing on both approaches, the present study starts with the microscopic
analysis of the translations of gendered discourses in the source text and the
application of the gendered linguistic features within the two English translations to
4.1 Methodological Basis 55
identify points of differences and similarities between them. It then conducts

macroscopic analysis to give interpretations to these differences and similarities in
functional terms from a discursive perspective.
4.1.2 Corpus as Practical Interface
Research that combines the micro and macro approaches together may be con-
ducted in two directions, either from the macroscopic panorama to the microscopic
textual particularities or vice versa (Tymoczko 2007: 17). The present study is to
begin from the microscopic textual end and move on to the interpretation of the
cultural and ideological significance of the resulting patterns.
To be specific, on the micro level, for the investigation of the potentially
important linguistic features that may be gendering/gendered in the target texts,
computer-based text corpus will be used, providing a standardized data base and a
ready access to it; compatible computer software will be harnessed to facilitate the
generation of the linguistic data and patterns in terms of translator’s gender per-
formance. On the macro level, the frameworks of post-structuralist theorization of
gender and the CDA approach to discourse analysis will be adopted, taking con-
textual factors into serious consideration and underlining the significance of
small-scale textual elements for large-scale ideological and cultural positioning of
gender.
While corpus-based translation studies, starting from the early 1990s, have been
acknowledged as a paradigm in the field of translation studies (Wang 2006; Hu
2012), the methodology of corpus linguistics has also recently informed both
domains of gender and language research and CDA. In the field of gender and
language studies, Janet Holmes and colleague (Holmes 1993, 1994, 1997; Holmes
and Meyerhoff 1999; Holmes and Sigley 2001; Sigley and Holmes 2002), for
instance, have been carrying out for decades corpus-based research into various
potentially gender-constructing usages in New Zealand English. Using large-scale
corpora, including the BROWN, LOB, FROWN, FLOB etc., they focus mainly on
the sexist language usage such as generic pronouns, sexist suffixes and
cross-classification etc. in New Zealand context. Pearce (2008) has examined the
representation of men and women in the British National Corpus (BNC) by
focusing on the collocational and grammatical behavior of the noun lemmas MAN
and WOMAN. Using corpus query tool, he has explored the functional distribution
of the target lemmas, and revealed the structured and systematic nature of the
differences in the way these terms for adult male and female human beings pattern
with other word forms in different grammatical relations.
Corpora have been used in CDA studies to address complaints by critics that
CDA findings are based on very small amounts of specifically-selected texts
(Widdowson 2000, for example, has lashed on CDA and Stubbs (2001a) offered an
active response). The most well-known critical discourse analyst to use corpora are
Michael Stubbs (1995, 1997, 2001b) and Paul Baker (Baker 2005, 2006; Baker and
56 4 Methodology
McEnery 2005; Baker et al. 2007). Stubbs (1997) argues that using corpora could
strengthen CDA research in terms of empirical methods: “a much wider range of
data must be sampled before generalizations are made about typical language use…
this entails the use of quantitative and probabilistic methods of text and corpus
analysis” (Stubbs 1997: 111). Baker (2006) also suggests a useful methodological
synergy combining critical discourse analysis with corpus linguistics to examine
discourses of particular interests to both linguists in general and critical analysts in
particular. He points out the advantages with using corpora in doing discourse
analysis as (1) reducing researcher bias; (2) being able to establish that repeated
patterns of language use demonstrate evidence of particular hegemonic discourses;
(3) revealing resistant discourses that are less likely to be uncovered through
smaller-scale studies; and (4) being compatible with post-structuralist preference of
“more eclectic approach to research, whereby different methodologies can be
combined together, acting as reinforcers of each other” (Baker 2006: 10–17).
A few words of further notice for the approach adopted for the present study of
combining the microscopic with the macroscopic analysis through corpus are in
order here. One of the potential problems with using corpora in the analysis of
(translation) discourse is that the data that is dealt with is decontextualized.
Researchers may not know the discursive factors shaping the production of the
(translated) texts in a (translation) corpus. However, issues surrounding the social
conditions of production and interpretation of (translated) texts are important in
helping the researchers understand discourses surrounding them (Fairclough 1989:
25). Questions involving production, such as who authored a (translated) text, under
what circumstances, for what motives and for whom, in addition to questions
surrounding the interpretation of a (translated) text: who bought, read, accessed,
used the text, what were their responses, etc. cannot be simply answered by
corpus-based techniques, and therefore require knowledge and analysis on the part
of the researcher who use corpus and corpus tool of how a (translated) text exists
within the context of society. In a sense, this can be a methodological advantage, as
Hunston (2002: 123) explains “. . . the researcher is encouraged to spell out the
steps that lie between what is observed and the interpretation placed on those
observations.” That is why a macroscopic analysis should be in position. Since
corpus data does not interpret itself, it is up to the researcher to make sense of the
patterns of language which are found within a corpus, proposing reasons for their
existence or looking for further evidence to support hypotheses.
The theoretical interface connecting the micro and macro analysis is drawn from
the theoretical and methodological framework offered by CDA. As has been sug-
gested in previous chapter, one basic concept of CDA is that linguistic text and
social structures form mutual relationships through the notion of discourse; the
formal properties of a text are regarded as “cues in the process of interpretation”
(Fairclough 1989: 24). That is to say, to move the “telescope” from the micro to the
macro is inherent mechanism for CDA research. In terms of the macro functional
analysis of the results from micro investigation of the linguistic gender construction
4.1 Methodological Basis 57
and representation, post-structuralist theories of gender, power and discourse are the
frameworks within which the data generated from corpus is interpreted, in hopes of
demystifying the interrelationships of gender construction, power and ideology.
4.2 Data Collection and Analysis
4.2.1 Overview of the Procedure
The study takes six steps to answer the research questions posited in the first
chapter. The initial step involves the selection of the texts and the compilation of
the parallel corpus. Then, by referring to previous research, potentially important
linguistic features that may be gendered/gendering are selected to address the issue
of the interaction between gender identity and language use. Following that, dis-
courses in the source text that are judged as carrying explicit gender bias and
stereotypes are spotted. Here, the focus is shifted away to how the translators
represent the gender bias and stereotypes in the target texts. The following step is
data mining and analyzing: (1) Computer-assisted text description in terms of the
language use of the translators is conducted and the translations (if there are any) of
the gendered discourses are analyzed in the target texts; (2) The target text features
are mapped onto the source text to reveal translation shifts and traces of translator
manipulation and mediation; (3) The two target texts are compared to keep track of
patterns of similarities and differences between them in terms of the translations of
gendered discourses in the source text, the translator’s gendered ways of language
use as well as the forms of translation shifts. As a final step, functional analysis that
takes into consideration the situational, institutional and social factors is conducted
to interpret the patterns of similarity and difference between the target texts.
4.2.2 Selection of Texts
The research data come from the novel Chinese Chenzhong De Chibang [沉重的翅
膀], by the female writer Zhang Jie, and the two English translations of the novel.
Published in 1981 by the People’s Literature Publishing House in Beijing, the
novel was awarded Mao Dun national prize for fiction1 in 1985. It is a seminal work
1
Named after the renowned Chinese writer Mr. Mao Dun, the prize was set up in 1981 to honor the
most excellent Chinese novels every four years and became the most influential awards for
literature in mainland China till today.
58 4 Methodology
of the “reform literature”2 dominant in the early 1980s in mainland China, which
takes the economic reform in the field of China’s heavy industry as the central
theme. The novel does not have a principle plot, but a panorama of small plots.
These plots center upon the conflicts between diehard party hacks and enlightened
reformer in the ‘Ministry of Heavy Industry’ and in the ‘Morning Light Auto
Works’ where the reformers try to implement their project. On the reform side are
two vice ministers, 65-year old Zheng Ziyun, cautious, devoted to the people’s
interests and determined to end the corruption and inefficiency; and his younger
ally, the faintly cynic Wang Fangliang. In the factory, their cause is embodied by
Chen Yongming, the new director, and by his spirited and active foreman, Yang
Xiaodong. Ranged against the reformers are officials concerned only with clinging
to power and ones who believe that any other way of running industry except
putting politics in command are revisionists, represented by the minister, Tian
Shoucheng. In addition to the struggle between these officials, the novel describes
the inadequacy of the Chinese marriage system in the 1980s: out of six married
couples only one is happy. Vice-minister Zheng has no love for his wife who has
been unfaithful to him, yet in public he plays the part of a devoted husband for the
sake of his political image. Fang Wenxuan, another advocate of reform, when sent
down to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, had fallen love with a
young widow after his wife left him. He did not marry her though, thinking that
once he was rehabilitated such a marriage would count against him. So he too has
thrown away his chance of personal happiness.
Gladys Yang’s translation, titled Leaden Wings, was published in 1987 by the
London-based Virago Press. Howard Goldblatt’s other version, Heavy Wings, was
published in 1989 by Grove Weidenfeld in New York.
The reason why Chenzhong De Chibang and translations have been selected as
the subject of study is threefold. Firstly, it is suitable for the investigation of gender
performance and construction from a poststructuralist perspective. Though by a
woman writer, the novel is not hailed as a typical feminist work (although there are
discourses within it which involve gender issues). This is exactly its advantage,
since it constitutes a more ready discourse for exploring the diversity of ways of
gender construction as well as the subtle and covert workings of power, particularly
in modern Chinese society. Two important insights for studies on the interface
between gender and language (including translation) from Third Wave feminism
and poststructuralist theories have been the recognition of the diverse ways of
constructing gender identities among women and men according to contexts, which
call for the understanding of the historically and culturally contingent analysis of
2
It is a term from the field of history of Chinese literature which refers to a literary phenomenon
that was informed and influenced by the Chinese economic reform that started in the late 1970s in
mainland China. The economic reform was aimed to change the structure of a centrally planned
economy by gradually introducing and incorporating the mechanism of market economy so as to
establish a socialist market economy. It was against this backdrop that a group of literary works
were created in which the writers highlighted the disadvantages with the old economic system and
the necessity of a reform.
4.2 Data Collection and Analysis 59
gender; and, particularly, the pervasiveness of the subtle, hidden forms of power
play in modern institutions. While the structure of gender and the power asymmetry
it entails have been persistent over time and place, they have assumed a diversity of
implicit forms. The important goal for studies enlightened by Third Wave feminism
and post-structuralism is to undertake contingent analysis of the power relations
between women and men in different discourses, including, not the least, discourses
that do not appear gendered in an explicit way. As for socialist China, while
feminist movement of the kind of those in the European and North American
societies has never occurred, feminism has always been subordinate to other
national issues such as national liberation, reform and development. Therefore, the
contrast between the forms of social gender asymmetry in China and those in the
west requires greater demand for translation as well as bigger space for mediation
for the translator.
Secondly, the author of the source text and the translators of the target texts are
well-known and well-received both domestically and internationally, and they are
considered the leading writer/translators. Zhang Jie is widely acknowledged as one
of the most successful writers in contemporary China, who has won a series of prize
for her literary works. She has also gained attention from overseas, a major figure in
Dillard’s (1984) work of journalism and the research subject of important sinologists
and Chinese literature scholars (Kinkley 2000: 250). Howard Goldblatt (1939-) is a
well established translator of contemporary Chinese literature in the US who is
widely recognized as the chief western translator in the field. Up to now, he has
translated more than 60 Chinese works by over 30 important contemporary writers
(including Taiwan and Hong Kong writers), particularly 12 books by the mainland
China male writer Mo Yan, the winner of Nobel Prize for Literature in 2012. Gladys
Yang (née Taylor 1919–1999), a British who married the Chinese translator Yang
Xianyi, is also a celebrated translator of Chinese literature. In collaboration with her
husband or independently, Yang has translated over 100 Chinese works, including
Chinese classics (such as Ming dynasty stories, the greatest Chinese classic A Dream
of Red Mansions [红楼梦], four volumes of selected works of Lu Xun, one of
China’s most well-known writers in the 20th-century), and many other works by
major modern and contemporary Chinese writers, particularly a group of contem-
porary Chinese women writers such as Zhang Jie and Wang Anyi (王安忆). Given
that the author and the translators are (was) prominent figures of the time, and their
names resonate, their works largely represent the mainstream, or prevalent, values of
particular time and culture and the aesthetic criteria of the general public within those
time and places. It should be pointed out that, in spite of their high reputation in
China, both the Chinese writer and English translators are largely ignored by the
English-speaking academia, particularly in the field of translation studies.
Last but not least, the translators of the two translations exhibit differences in
more than one categories of social identity, such as background and nationality etc.,
while biological gender difference being one. It is assumed that the translations by
the opposite sex translators demonstrate contrast in terms of gender construction
60 4 Methodology
and representation and that the gender construction in translation is also shot
through by their other social identity categories. Meanwhile, it is expected that the
translations share similarities that would challenge stereotypical ways of perceiving
gender performance in terms of linguistic behaviors.
4.2.3 The Compilation of the Corpus
The corpus compiled for the present study is a Chinese-English parallel corpus. It
consists of one source text and two target texts, which are respectively aligned with
the source text at sentence level, so the corpus consists of two subcorpus, source
text-Yang’s translation corpus and source text-Goldblatt’s translation corpus. The
software used to do the aligning is ParaConc (Barlow 1995), which is a multilingual
concordancer that offers the functions of semi-auto alignment as well as corpus
searching. The size of the corpus is shown in Table 4.1.
The target texts are annotated in terms of parts of speech, using the system
offered in the latest version of the POS tagging software for English text, CLAWS
(the Constituent Likelihood Automatic Word-tagging System) developed by
UCREL at Lancaster. As claimed on its website (http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/claws/), the
software can achieve 96–97% accuracy on average with even higher rate for major
categories. The purpose of tagging the corpus with part-of-speech information is to
facilitate the generation in later stage of research of the possible picture of differ-
ences in word usage through grammatical information. Such grammatical infor-
mation can aid search for certain linguistic features that may be revealing as regards
gender identity constructions.
The software that is used to assist search in the corpus is ParaConc and
WordSmith 6.0 (Scott 2012). A well-known and widely applied concordancer,
ParaConc can realize simple text search, regular expression search, tag search and
parallel search. The last mode of search is especially useful for this study in that it
enables the co-occurrence of fragments from both source and target texts, facili-
tating the mapping of the target text onto the source text. WordSmith tool kit is an
integrated suite of programs for looking at how words behave in texts. It can
generate global as well as specific information about texts. One source of text
information that can be generated through WordSmith is the mean sentence length
of a loaded text, which is one aspect of comparison between the two target texts of
this study.
Table 4.1 Size of the parallel corpus

Texts Source text Target text by Goldblatt Target text by Yang
Character/word counts 224,023 107,938 55,727
4.2.4 Selecting Linguistic Features and Spotting Gendered

Discourses
The ways in which the translators perform gender are explored along two dimen-
sions, the construction of their own gender identities and the representation in the
translation of gender constructed in the source text. The ways in which the trans-
lators use language to construct their gender identities can be revealed through the
actual linguistic features of the target texts. How each of them represents the gender
constructed in the source text, then, can be brought out through the ways they
mediate and re-frame the source text with textual and especially paratextual means
in the target contexts and the ways how they translate the gendered discourses of
the source text. Therefore, this part explains the selection of the linguistic features
upon which translators’ gender identity is contructed and how gendered discourses
in the source text are revealed.
Prior to exploring the language use of the translators, a principled decision must
be made as to which linguistic features to be focused upon. For the purposes of this
study, previous research on gender and language (Lakoff 1975; Holmes 1990;
Holmes and Sigley 2001; Holmes and Meyerhoff 2003; Mills 2008; Mills and
Mullany 2011), gender and politeness (Holmes 1995; Mills 2003), gender and
stylistics (Mills 1995), gender and narratology (Page 2006; Simpson 1993), ide-
ology (Munday 2008; Simpson 1993), and critical discourse analysis (Fairclough
1989, 1992, 1995, 2003) were surveyed to identify potentially important linguistic
features—those that have been associated with particular gender functions and
therefore might be used to construct varied gender identities in various contexts.
Meanwhile, Quirk et al. (1985) English grammar book was also consulted for the
categorization of the linguistic features. Since the study does not focus on the
construction of gender identity in certain linguistic aspect, no a priori commitment
is made concerning the importance of a particular linguistic feature or the validity of
a previous functional interpretation during the selection of features. Rather, the goal
is to include the widest possible range of potentially relevant linguistic features that
can be managed via computer software so as to reveal a fullest possible picture of
the sources drawn by translators in their construction of gender identities.
The survey identified six features to be focused upon. In addition, since it is a
study based on corpus, four sources of corpus statistics are also included. All
together, these features are grouped into five major categories, as listed at the end of
the chapter. While category A includes the corpus statistics, categories B, C and D
encompass the six linguistic features identified. It should be pointed out that the
categorization in operation here may not be fully consistent with the categorization
under which they are subsumed in the research referred to as listed above. This is
because some of them are across-categorical and can be viewed as demonstrative of
the interplay between gender issues and more than one research domain. The
English passivity, for instance, is discussed in Mills (1995) in relation to the
interaction between gender and stylistics, and also explored in Page (2006) as
regards feminist narratology. Moreover, Munday (2008) and Simpson (1993) both
62 4 Methodology
argue that it is a linguistic means involved in the manipulation of ideology in an

implicit fashion. Most features under the categories of modality, transitivity and
pragmatics consist of more than one member, words or forms that come to be the
search items keyed into the corpus.
The reasons why it is the above features that are set up as the items for inves-
tigation are in order here. As has already been mentioned above, the study aims to
include as many as possible of potentially relevant linguistic features so as to reveal
the sources drawn by translators in their construction of gender identities. Before
the selection (it is a selection though), no pre-existing assessment is imposed as to
which features would be more likely aspects where differences between the male
and female translators in terms of language use would be demonstrated. This seems
to be reminiscent of the so-called corpus-driven approach when the researcher
approaches the corpus data in a “naïve” fashion without any pre-conceived cate-
gorization scheme. However, the study is largely corpus-based rather than
corpus-driven because on the one hand, only features that are manageable through
corpus software are included, which means the features can be searched and
examined in concordances in a properly annotated corpus via corpus software, and
on the other hand, the research did not take a “naïve” stance towards the data. To
begin with, generations of researchers since Lakoff (1975) have accumulated a huge
body of research concerning the possible dimensions where differences between
women’s and men’s language use could occur, and these research are referred to yet
with modification and expansion of research scope. For example, pragmatic means
such as the intensifier so, and the downtoner sort of etc. have been investigated in
different context and text types as to verify the original claim of Lakoff about the
powerless, uncertain and hyperbole nature of women’s language. While such
studies are informative to some extent, it is felt that they are too limited in scope
and may not be generalized to other words of similar functions and other contexts.
One possible reason for the limitation may be that most studies resort to the manual
work of the researcher and therefore cannot handle greater amount of data. The
corpus that this study is based upon allows chances to examine large database with
computer technology and gain results almost instantly. Therefore, as many as
possible of the recognized pragmatic words are included as research items. The two
features of modality and transitivity have been investigated in terms of their ide-
ological functions (Fairclough 1989, 1992; Simpson and Mayr 2010). Simpson
(1993) also demonstrated that the English passivity could carry hidden gender bias.
Since gender is an integral part of the general ideology circulating in society, it is
thus reasonable to argue that what can be vehicles for ideology in general may also
be used with a commitment to gender performance. In addition, second wave
feminist translation studies have demonstrated that translators with a commitment
to feminism would give themselves considerable free rein to challenge the writers
they translate and make themselves visible through the practices such as prefacing
and footnoting (von Flotow 1991: 72). This indicates that translator’s mediation is
one scope for the construction of gender. Finally, the features selected are intended
to involve the lexical, grammatical and textual values of the texts, following the
guide for text description proposed in CDA as introduced in the previous chapter.
According to CDA, these formal features of a text are embedded in discursive

practices which are in turn implicated in social processes of power struggle.
Therefore, they constitute clues to the demystification of gender ideology.
After Hall (1997), I define gender representation in translation as the presenta-
tion of the general gender tone and/or the specific image of male or female char-
acters constructed in the source text through the target language in the target text
which may involve recreation or reconstruction of the tone and/or the image.
The gender tone is suggestive of the author’s gendered positioning of the work
and/or her own attitude towards femininity and masculinity, and it can be indicated
by the general thematic and narrative features and the paratextual elements, in
addition to lexical means. In translation, mediation may be set to operation when
the translators license themselves to modify thematic plotting or narrative
arrangements, most effectively through the means of deletion and addition, or they
may remove or add some paratextual elements so as to hide or highlight the
author’s gender performance. In this study, translator’s mediation is investigated in
the three aspects of the naming of characters, translational omission and paratextual
elements (including list of characters, preface, afterwords and footnotes). The
naming of characters is relevant to the paratextual elements of list of characters. To
explore translational omission rather than addition demands more words of
explanation. The decision was made during the compilation of the corpus when in
both translations were found considerable texts that are omitted yet addition was not
involved. While too much deletion may cause alteration to the narrative organi-
zation and literary theme, it is also felt to be likely to have impact on gendered
characterization and the general gender tone of the whole work. Translator’s
mediation is demonstrated in category E in the following list.
Texts that function to construct gender image in the source text are recognized as
gendered discourses. Sunderland (2004) defines a gendered discourse as one which
“gender is already part of” (Sunderland 2004: 20). It can be both representative and
constitutive, bringing together “the two traditional ‘prongs’ of gender and language
study—language use and gender representation” (ibid: 21). When gender is seen as
an idea or construct, a discourse can be said to be gendered if it suggests that men
and women are different in certain aspects. Gendered discourses can also refer to
the explicit power asymmetry between men and women in interaction or any
unfavorable evaluation toward either men or women. Since this study takes
translated texts as the research object, a gendered discourse is defined as language
use in the source text, which can be words, phrases, idioms, sentences or stretches
of text explicitly or implicitly linked to female or male character description or to
authorial discussion about issues concerning gender, that may undergo alteration or
modification in semantics or cultural value when translated into the target text
because of the conscious or unconscious mediation of the translators in terms of
gender. Therefore, to determined the gendered discourses in the source text, gender
is understood both in the senses of an idea or construct and the asymmetrical power
relation between women and men. For example, from the perspective of the first
sense, the translation strategies adopted in translating the Chinese character “人”
(whether into the masculine form men or the gender neutral human) constitute a
64 4 Methodology
point of investigation; regarding the second sense, expressions such as “男尊女卑”

(literally men are superior, women inferior) will be prompt for translation inves-
tigation. Categories F and G in the list below incorporate the two types of gendered
discourses.
The way to assess the gendered discourses is through reading the text and
making judgment by the researcher of the study. Largely on the basis of line-to-line
reading and subjective judgment, the extraction of the discourses is a matter of
researcher subjectivity. As to the issue of researcher subjectivity, both scholars
doing gender and language research and critical discourse analysts have taken
explicit stands.
For any researchers engaged in gender and language studies, be they explicitly
politically committed to gender issues or not, such study is political in the broadest
sense because they inform exploration of ways to achieve gender equality in one
way or another. Sunderland (2006) suggests that claims of objective, apolitical
research knowledge are impossible because researchers always influence the
research process to a more or less extent (60–61). According to Mills and Mullany
(2011), researchers should openly and directly acknowledge that their orientations
“will be shaped by their socio-historical locations, including the values and interests
that these locations confer upon them” (Hammersley and Atkinson, quoted in Mills
and Mullany 2011: 119). She also suggest that what is needed is “a more radical
consciousness of self in facing the political dimensions… and constructing
knowledge”, and that researchers are affected by “other factors intersecting with
gender—such as nationality, race, ethnicity, class and age…” (Callaway, quoted in
Mills 2011: 119).
CDA goes further in this respect. One defining principle of CDA is its view as to
the relationship between analysis and the practices analyzed. Fairclough and Wodak
(1997) claims that CDA is not a dispassionate and objective social science, but has
explicitly political commitment: “many analysts are politically active against
racism, or as feminists, or within the peace movement, and so forth” (Fairclough
and Wodak 1997: 258). Van Dijk (1993) also affirms that “critical discourse ana-
lysts (should) take an explicit sociopolitical stance: they spell out their point of
view, perspective, principles and aims, both within their discipline and within
society at large” (van Dijk 1993: 252). Though engaged in and committed to
various degree to political issues, researchers within the fields of gender and lan-
guage studies and CDA are not doing research in less scholarly fashion in any way:
standards of careful, rigorous and systematic analysis apply with no reduced force.
The mechanism involved in the judgment of gendered discourses in the source text
is what is termed “members’ recources”, or MR in short (Fairclough 1989: 11). It is a
concept that Fairclough borrows from cognitive psychology to bear upon the process
of discourse interpretation. Fairclough defines MR as representations that are:
Prototypes for a very diverse collection of things—the shapes of words, the grammatical
forms of sentences, the typical structure of a narrative, the properties of types of object and
person, the expected sequence of events in a particular situation type, and so forth. Some of
these are linguistic, and some of them are not. (Fairclough 1989: 11)
The MR, part of human cognitive capacity, is social in nature in the sense that
they are socially generated out of the social relations and struggles, “socially
transmitted” and socially distributed (Fairclough 1989: 24). The process of inter-
pretation is largely the interaction between properties of text and social conditions
via MR which people have in their heads and draw upon. Social conditions shape
MR and MR shapes the way in which people interpret texts. What is suggested is
that researcher subjectivity in the process of interpretation is more a socially
determined process, objective in a sense, and the researcher for this study is no
exception.
Listed below are the features for all categories and the specific search items
subsumed under them:
A. Corpus statistics
1. Word/character count
2. Type-token ratio (TTR, STTR)
3. Mean sentence length
4. Lexical density
5. Subordinate clauses introduced by that, which, where, who, whom, whose
and why
B. Modality
6. Modal auxiliaries: can, may, might, could, ought to, should, must, will,
would, shall
C. Transitivity
7. Passive voice
8. There-BE structure
D. Pragmatic features
9. Emphasizers: actually, certainly, clearly, definitely, indeed, obviously,
plainly, really, surely, for certain, for sure, of course, frankly, honestly,
literally, simply, fairly, just
10. Amplifiers: absolutely, altogether, completely, entirely, extremely, fully,
perfectly, quite, thoroughly, totally, utterly, badly, bitterly, deeply, enor-
mously, far, greatly, heartily, highly, intensely, much, severly, so, strongly,
terribly, violently, well, a great deal, a good deal, a lot, by far, pretty, too,
very, exclamatory how, the intensifying use of most
11. Downtoners: almost, nearly, practically, virtually, all but, kind of, sort of,
rather, enough, sufficiently, more or less, mildly, partially, partly, slightly,
somewhat, in part, to some extent, a bit, a little, only, merely, just, barely,
hardly, scarcely, little, at all
66 4 Methodology
E. Translator’s mediation
12. Naming of characters
13. Translational addition and omission
14. Paratextual elements: list of characters, preface, afterwords, footnotes
F. Gendered discourses
15. Translation of “人” and its collocates
16. Translation of the gendered discourses
The corpus statistics are information that is automatically yielded by corpus
software and the linguistic features of modality, transitivity and pragmatics can be
searched out from the corpus with the assistance of corpus software programs too.
The features accounting for translator’s mediation, specifically translational omis-
sion, can also be retrieved from the corpus as special marks to indicate the deleted
parts in the translation have already been added when compiling the corpus.
Correspondences of “人” together with its collocates “类” (literally kind) or “们”
(Chinese character to indicate plurality) can be accessed through ParaConc where
aligned concordances of the source sentence fragments and the translations are
displayed side by side. The gendered discourses are the only part that calls for
manual work involving intensive reading of the paper back. Yet corpus is later
employed to retrieve the translations of these discourses assisted by ParaConc.
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Chapter 5
Results and Discussion
In this chapter the results of text analysis in terms of the language use of the female
and male translators and the gender representation in both translations will be
presented; also, the possible factors that influence the linguistic performance of the
translators will be discussed. The first part focuses on the translators’ language use
along the dimensions of corpus statistics, modality, transitivity and pragmatic
features while the second part deals with the gender representation through trans-
lator’s mediation and the translations by the two translators of the gendered dis-
courses in the source text. Patterns emerge as to the features of translators’ language
use and the ways in which they represent gendered discourses in the translations. As
patterns are accumulated bit by bit, jigsaw is gained by piecing together the bits so
that the discourses constitutive of the translators’ gender identities as well as
determinative of the gender representation will be recognized. The final part of the
chapter is a discussion of the workings of the discourse(s) that produce the trans-
lations. The way the discourse(s) influence the translations will be accounted for
under the framework of post-structuralism where gender is theorized as contextu-
alized performance through language and discourse is constitutive social practice so
that individual’s language use is both determinative of their gender subjectivity and
determined by institutional and social structures within which power struggle is
involved.
5.1 Language Use in the Two Translations
5.1.1 Corpus Statistics
The corpus statistics of types, tokens, TTR, STTR and mean sentence length of the
two translations are automatically generated by WordSmith version 6.0. The lexical
density and the percentage of subordinate clauses are calculated by hand assisted by

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3720-8_5
70 5 Results and Discussion
the searching function of Microsoft Word 2007, with the POS annotations as clues.
The number of tokens in a corpus refers to the total number of words whereas the
number of types refers to the total number of unique words.1 When the number of
types is divided by the number of tokens, the result is type/token ratio, TTR, which
is expressed as percentage. The higher the percentage is, the more diverse the lexis
in a text is, whereas lower percentage means more repetition of words in the text.
However, due to the repetitive nature of function words, the larger the corpus is, the
lower the TTR will be (Baker et al. 2006: 162). A solution to the problem is to
calculate a standard type/token ratio, STTR. The idea is to get the TTR for, say, the
first 2,000, and then the next 2,000, and so on until to the end of the text. The STTR
is calculated by working out the average TTR of all the separate TTRs. With corpus
software such as WordSmith, which is embedded algorithm, the calculation is
achieved automatically. Lexical density is determined by the ratio between the
number of content word tokens (nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs) and the number
of all tokens (Ure 1971). The percentage of the subordinate clauses is calculated by
dividing the total number of subordinate clauses by the total number of the sen-
tences in a text. The total number of sentences in the translation is calculated by
dividing the number of the tokens by mean sentence length which is automatically
generated by WordSmith software. The results are shown in Table 5.1.
Table 5.1 above shows that, compared with Yang’s translation, Goldblatt’s
translation is greater in length (by comparing the number of tokens), less diverse in
lexical items (by comparing TTR and STTR), and built on longer sentences on
average. Meanwhile, Goldblatt’s translation demonstrates lower lexical density and
more subordinate clauses made with relative pronouns and adverbs. That means it
relies less heavily on content words than Yang’s yet is constructed with complex
sentences stressing logical relations between ideas. A preliminary indication is that
Yang’s version may be more easily understood than Goldblatt’s, yet it involves
heavier translator’s mediation since it is much shorter. However, it would be too
rash to claim that Goldblatt is more faithful to the source text than Yang at this early
stage based on this limited information. Patterns of specific language use on the part
of both translators are needed to build up the argument.
5.1.2 Modality
The study focuses on the English modal auxiliaries as the means for expressing
modality, an important part of the interpersonal function of language. Quirk and
colleagues (1985) discuss nine English auxiliaries, and point out that there are four
other English verbs, ought to, dare, need and used to, which are neither strictly
modal nor full ordinary verbs (Quirk et al. 1985: 120–127, 135–136). All the nine
1
For example, if the word women occurs 10 times in a small corpus, the number of token of the
word is 10, but it only counts as one type of word.
5.1 Language Use in the Two Translations 71
Table 5.1 Corpus statistics of the two translations

Yang’ translation Goldblatt’ translation
Type 6,508 9,123
Token 55,843 108,298
TTR 11.65 8.42
STTR 46.72 45.82
Mean sentence length 10.27 13.34
Lexical density 61.17% 56.57%
Subordinate clauses 476/8.75% 1,358/16.73%
auxiliaries and one verb intermediate between auxiliaries and full verbs, i.e. ought
to, are analyzed in both translations. The reason why ought to is selected instead of
other three is that the verb seems closer to the modal auxiliary end than to the full
verb end and is regarded by other scholars as interchangeable with should (Palmer
1990: 122). The auxiliaries and their counts are listed in Table 5.2.
In terms of total word count, Goldblatt used more auxiliaries than Yang did.
However, with regard to the frequency of these verbs per thousand words, modal
auxiliaries appear more frequently in Yang’s translation than in Goldblatt’s. In
terms of frequency, again, there are five auxiliaries in Yang’s translation which
appear more than once per thousand words on average whereas in Goldblatt’s
translation, the number is four. The five auxiliaries in Yang’s translation are, from
the most frequent to the least, would, could, should, must and can. In Goldblatt’s,
following the same way of order, they are can, would, could and will.
According to Quirk and colleagues (1985), different modal auxiliaries may
express varied modal meanings in different context. These modal meanings can be
divided into two types, “intrinsic” and “extrinsic” (Quirk et al. 1985: 219). Intrinsic
modality includes “permission, obligation and volition, which involve some kind of
intrinsic human control over events” (ibid). Extrinsic modality, on the other hand,
refers to “possibility, necessity and prediction which do not primarily involve
human control of events, but do typically involve human judgment of what is or is
not likely to happen” (ibid). Quirk and colleagues (1985) also distinguishes the
major meanings of these modals (ibid: 221–235), as showed in Table 5.3.
The next step is to explore the specific use of each auxiliary in the translation
based on Quirk and colleagues’ categorization. The translation is examined in the
following aspects: (1) the modal meaning realized by the auxiliaries in specific
contexts in the translations; (2) the shifts of modal meaning during the transfer from
the source text to the target text; (3) the identity of the users (characters) of the
auxiliaries in the translations; and (4) the subject of the sentence in which the
auxiliaries constitute the predicate.
For each of the four aspects of investigation, some words of further explanation
need to be added. First, in the translated texts, the auxiliaries may or may not realize
all the meanings listed in the above table. Second, while in the source text may be
found specific Chinese words or phrases corresponding to the auxiliaries, there is
Table 5.2 Modal auxiliaries used in the two translations

Yang’ translation Goldblatt’ translation
Count Frequency (per thousand Count Frequency (per thousand
words) words)
Would 192 3.44 237 2.19
Could 175 3.13 215 1.99
Should 82 1.47 97 0.90
Must 77 1.38 62 0.57
Can 65 1.16 257 2.37
Will 18 0.32 108 1.00
Might 51 0.91 74 0.68
May 13 0.23 18 0.17
Shall 2 0.04 1 0.009
Ought 30 0.54 32 0.30
to
Total 705 12.62 1101 10.17
Table 5.3 Major meanings of the English modal verbs

Major meanings
Can Possibility Ability Permission
Could Tentativeness/politeness Hypothetical meaning Past tense
Will Prediction Volition
Would Tentativeness/politeness Hypothetical meaning Past tense
Should Tentative inference Obligation
Might Tentative possibility Tentative permission
May Possibility Permission
Must Logic necessity Compulsion/obligation
Shall Volition Prediction
Ought to Tentative inference Obligation
also the possibility that they are used to express the modal meaning which is spread
across a whole sentence instead of borne by any specific Chinese word. Third, the
users of the auxiliaries refer to the characters, female or male, or the narrator, the
ones to whom the sentences in which the auxiliaries appear are attributed. Finally,
the subject can be female characters, male characters, plural pronouns or nouns that
refer to both human and non-human beings.
5.1.2.1 Modality in Yang’s Translation
The modal meanings expressed by the ten auxiliaries, the subjects and users of the
sentences in which the auxiliaries constitute and their frequencies in Yang’s
translation are presented in Table 5.4.
In Table 5.4, “past tense” is treated as a kind of modality because the past tense
forms of “could” and “would” express the modalities which their present tense form
may do except that they are simultaneously functional in expressing tense.
Therefore, the past tense form of “could” may express the modalities of ability,
possibility or permission, and “would” may express the modalities of volition and
prediction. Table 5.5 demonstrates that the ten auxiliaries in Yang’s translation
express all together 18 modalities, and there are 7 auxiliaries which realize more
than one modal meaning in different contexts. For the 7 auxiliaries, the percentage
is not equal for the expression of all the modal meanings. For “can”, the “ability”
modality appears the most frequently, while the “permission” modality the least
frequently. “Could” is used to express the modality of “tentativeness/politeness”
more often than “hypothetical meaning” or “past tense”. The “prediction” modality
of “will” has a far larger percentage than the “volition” modality, while its past
tense form “would” expresses more of “hypothetical meaning” modality than
“tentativeness/politeness” modality. The “obligation” modality of “should” appears
more often than the modality of “tentative inference”. While more than half of
“must” is used to express the modality of “compulsion/obligation”, the number of
“ought to” to express the “obligation” modality is twice as much as that to express
the “tentativeness” modality.
Meanwhile, the table also shows that for most modalities, male characters are the
most common subject and user of the sentence. To be more specific, apart from
“shall”, the subjects of 12 modalities and the users of 18 modalities are male. Plural
pronouns or nouns that include both male and female are posited as subjects most
frequently of the modalities of possibility “can”, volition “will”, obligation
“should”, possibility “may” and compulsion/obligation “must”. Non-human beings
are the most prominent subjects for prediction “will”, tentativeness/politeness
“would” and possibility “may”. Female is the most frequent subject option for none
of the modalities. In terms of the user profile, there is only one exception to the
dominant profile of male characters as the users of the modalities, i.e., the case of
“could” to express past tense. Again, female characters are not given much space in
initiating modality.
The modal auxiliaries in Yang’s translation are rendered from various Chinese
expressions or implicit meanings in the source text. Implicit meaning refers to the
situation where no explicit forms of expression can be found as corresponding to
the auxiliaries, yet the modal meaning is inferred from the sentence together with its
context, such as the examples from Yang’s translation below:
Table 5.4 Usage of modal auxiliaries in Yang’s translation
74
Modal meaning (%) Subject User

Female Male Plural pronouns or Non-human Female Male Narrator
characters (%) characters nouns (%) beings (%) characters (%) characters (%)
(%) (%)
Would Tentativeness/ 11/16.92 17/26.15 10/15.38 27/41.54 11/16.92 42/64.62 12/18.46
politeness 65/33.85
Hypothetical 81/42.19 8/9.88 32/39.51 18/22.22 23/28.40 14/17.28 55/67.90 12/14.81
Past tense 46/23.96 9/19.57 19/41.30 9/19.57 9/19.57 7/15.22 20/43.48 19/41.30
Could Tentativeness/ 14/16.67 47/55.95 13/15.48 10/11.90 12/14.29 46/54.76 26/30.95
politeness 84/48
Hypothetical 59/33.71 8/13.56 23/38.98 15/25.42 13/22.03 11/18.64 44/74.58 4/6.78
Past tense 32/18.29 7/21.88 20/62.5 4/12.5 1/3.12 1/3.12 8/25 23/71.88
Should Tentative inference 37/ 2/5.41 18/48.65 9/16.22 8/21.62 8/21.62 25/67.57 4/10.81
45.12
Obligation 45/54.88 6/13.33 12/26.67 17/37.78 10/22.22 8/17.78 34/75.56 3/6.67
Must Logic necessity 30/ 10/33.33 11/36.67 2/6.67 7/23.33 8/26.67 20/66.67 2/6.67
38.96
Compulsion/obligation 3/6.38 11/23.40 26/55.32 7/14.89 4/8.51 43/91.49 0
47/61.04
Can Ability 34/52.31 6/17.65 15/44.12 10/29.41 3/8.82 5/14.71 28/82.35 1/2.94
Possibility 20/30.77 2/10 6/30 8/40 4/20 1/5 19/95 0
Permission 11/16.92 2/18.18 5/45.45 4/36.36 0 3/27.27 8/72.73 0
Might Tentative possibility 5/9.80 20/39.22 9/17.65 17/33.33 15/29.41 31/60.78 5/9.80
51/100
Ought Tentativeness 10/33.33 3/30 7/70 0 0 2/20 8/80 0
to Obligation 20/66.67 3/15 10/50 5/25 2/10 3/15 17/85 0
(continued)
5 Results and Discussion
Table 5.4 (continued)
(%) (%)
Will Volition 4/22.22 0 1/25 2/50 1/25 0 4/100% 0
Prediction 14/77.78 0 4/28.57 2/14.29 8/57.14 1/7.14 13/92.86 0
May Possibility 13/100 2/15.38 3/23.08 4/30.77 4/30.77 4/30.77 8/61.54 1/7.69
Shall Prediction 2/100 1/50 0 1/50 0 1/50 1/50 0
Because of space limit, illustrations for each model meaning of the models in Yang’s translation are given in the first part of the appendix
75
For instance, she still couldn’t cook. But for him, she would be reduced to eating in the
canteen where everything tasted the same.
He could not hide this from a doctor’s eyes.
In the first example, the hypothetical use of “would” is the result of inference from
the source text based on the Chinese structure “如果……就” (literally if… will/
would). The structure is a typical Chinese expression for positing hypothesis or
options in which the event that my occur is described in the clause after “就” while the
condition for the occurrence of the event is introduced by the “如果” clause. In the
second example, the adjunct “不过” in the Chinese sentence, which expresses neg-
ative meaning, is the prompt for inferring the possibility modality the sentence bears.
In general, the relations between the auxiliaries used in Yang’s translation and
the sources that prompt the application of the auxiliaries fall into five categories:
(1) the specific Chinese words or phrases that express explicit modalities which
correspond to the modal meanings of the English auxiliaries, (2) the specific
Chinese words or phrases that convey modal meanings which go beyond the
meaning potential of the auxiliaries corresponding to them, which means translation
shifts happen, (3) implicit modalities that can be inferred from the source text which
correspond to the meanings of the auxiliaries in the translation, (4) implicit
modalities that can be inferred from the source text, yet which do not correspond to
the meanings of the auxiliaries used, another case of translation shifts, and (5) no
correspondence of any kind between the source text and target text, which suggests
the addition of modal auxiliaries in the translation. Table 5.5 shows the frequencies
of the five categories of correspondence between the source text and the target text.
In the table, the first category is noted as “direct translation”, the second as
“translation shift type A”, the third “inferred translation”, the fourth “translation
shift type B” and the last one “no correspondence”.
According to Table 5.5, in Yang’s translation, except for the low-frequency
“shall”, most other auxiliaries come largely from two sources, the specific Chinese
words or phrases that express the modalities which are within the meaning domain
of the auxiliaries and the implicit modalities that can be inferred which also match
the meanings of the auxiliaries. Between the two most common sources, the one
that is still more frequent for most auxiliaries is the first kind. Another auxiliary that
singles itself out is “would”, as the percentage of “would” that comes from inferred
translation is significantly higher than those from other sources and higher than
other auxiliaries compared down the same column. This may be because “would”
functions as the indicator of past future tense which in Chinese is not expressed
through any specific word, yet is inferred by the readers who depend on clues in the
context and logical reasoning. Generally, Yang’s translation modifies or changes
the source text modalities to a less extent than it keeps and transfers them into the
target text faithfully.
Table 5.5 Sources of the auxiliaries used in Yang’s translation
Direct translation Translation shift type A Inferred translation Translation shift type B No correspondence
Count Percentage Count Percentage Count Percentage Count Percentage Count Percentage
(%) (%) (%) (%) (%)
Would 9 4.69 2 1.04 173 90.10 7 3.65 1 0.52
Could 75 42.86 0 0 70 40 1 0.57 29 16.57
Should 43 52.44 8 9.76 13 15.85 8 9.76 10 12.20
Must 47 61.04 2 2.60 21 27.27 4 5.19 3 3.90

Can 30 46.15 2 3.08 27 41.54 3 4.62 3 4.62
Might 20 39.22 0 0 26 50.98 4 7.84 1 1.96
Ought 20 66.67 0 0 3 10 6 20 1 33.33
to
Will 6 33.33 0 0 8 44.44 4 22.22 0 0
May 9 69.23 0 0 4 30.77 0 0 0 0
Shall 0 0 0 0 2 100 0 0 0 0
Because of space limit, illustrations for each source of the modal auxiliaries applied in Yang’s translation are given in the second part of the appendix
77
5.1.2.2 Modality in Goldblatt’s Translation
The auxiliaries in Goldblatt’s translation are analyzed in the same fashion as in

Yang’s, i.e. in terms of the modal meanings, the subjects and users of the auxiliaries
and their frequencies. The results are reported in Table 5.6.
As demonstrated in Table 5.6, in Goldblatt’s translation, the ten modals express
19 modalities altogether, one more than in Yang’s, which is the “tentative per-
mission” of “might”, the rest being the same. There are 8 modals which realize
more than one modality in varied context at varied frequency. “Can” is used to
express the “ability” modality more often than the “possibility” and “permission”
modalities. “Could” is used to signal tense and the basic modalities of “can” slightly
more than the “tentativeness” or “hypothetical meaning” modalities. For “will”, the
“prediction” modality is much more frequent than the “volition” modality. The
percentage of “would” used to express “hypothetical meaning” is higher than that of
“would” used to express the other two modalities. While the “obligation” modality
of “should” is more than three times that of the “tentative inference”, the “tentative
possibility” expressed by “might” is overwhelming. “Must” expresses the “neces-
sity” modality in a higher percentage than the modality of “compulsion/obligation”.
Finally, about eighty percent of “ought to” is used to express “obligation” than
“tentativeness”.
As regards the subject and user profiles, there are some differences from Yang’s
translation. Apart from the low-frequency “shall” and the “tentative permission”
modality of “might”, there are 11 modalities of which the dominant subject is male,
and 8 modalities of which the dominant subject is non-human being. There is no
modality of which the most-frequent subject is female or plural pronoun or noun.
The “tentativeness” modality of “ought to” occurs with the same frequency for both
male and female subject. Yet the amount of this modality seems inadequate to form
a significant account. The difference from Yang’s translation is that in the latter,
there are five modalities of which the most common subject is plural pronouns or
nouns whilst in the Goldblatt’s, this type of subject is not the most adopted for
modality. This means the most favored subject options are more varied in Yang’s
translation than in Goldblatt’s. As for the user profile, it is almost invariably
dominated by male character with only one exception for the “past tense” use of
“would” by the narrator. This is quite a similar picture to Yang’s only except that in
Yang’s it is the “past tense” use of “could” which is distinct.
The sources for the application of the modal auxiliaries in Goldblatt’s translation
are the same five types as in Yang’s. Table 5.7 demonstrates the distribution of the
sources for each modal in Goldblatt’s translation.
The relations between Goldblatt’s translation and the source text, according to
Table 5.7, are primarily direct translation and inferred translation because for eight
modals, these two types of relation take the largest percentage among the five as
compared across the line. However, for the modal “will”, the most of it comes
instead from “translation shift type B”, that is, the modalities expressed by “will”
are not equivalent to those expressed in the source text. This is the same as in
Yang’s translation where the most common source for “will” also forms a mismatch
Table 5.6 Usage of modal auxiliaries in Goldblatt’s translation
(%) (%)
Can Ability 134/52.14 24/17.91 70/52.24 30/22.39 10/7.46 11/8.21 69/51.49 54/40.30
Possibility 94/36.58 12/12.77 44/46.81 23/24.47 25/26.60 9/9.57 68/72.34 17/18.09
Permission 29/11.28 4/13.79 14/48.28 7/24.14 4/13.79 7/24.14 21/72.41 1/3.45
Would Tentativeness/ 7/7.69 28/30.77 17/18.68 39/42.86 18/19.78 58/63.74 15/16.48
politeness 91/38.40
Hypothetical 109/ 8/7.34 25/22.94 20/18.35 56/51.38 15/13.76 63/57.80 31/28.44
45.99
Past tense 37/15.61 2/5.41 10/27.03 9/24.32 16/43.24 2/5.41 17/45.95 18/48.65
Could Tentativeness/ 15/33.33 7/15.56 6/13.33 16/35.56 6/13.33 25/55.56 13/28.89

politeness 45/20.93
Hypothetical 75/34.88 15/20 26/34.67 17/22.67 17/22.67 12/16 50/66.67 13/17.33
Past tense 95/44.19 15/15.79 42/44.21 24/25.26 15/15.79 9/9.47 45/47.37 42/44.21
Will Volition 20/18.52 2/10 9/45 3/15 6/30 4/20 13/65 3/15
Prediction 88/81.48 6/6.82 11/12.5 19/21.59 52/59.09 11/12.5 56/63.64 21/23.86
Should Tentative inference 23/ 4/17.39 10/43.48 4/17.39 5/21.74 5/21.74 16/69.57 2/8.70
23.71
Obligation 74/76.29 5/6.76 27/36.49 18/24.32 24/32.43 4/5.41 60/81.08 10/13.51
Might Tentative possibility 4/5.48 19/26.03 21/28.77 29/39.73 11/15.07 39/53.42 23/31.51
73/98.65
Tentative permission 1/100 0 0 0 1/100 0 0
1/1.35
Must 6/16.22 11/29.73 3/8.11 17/45.95 11/29.73 24/64.86 2/5.41
(continued)
79
Table 5.6 (continued)
80

(%) (%)
Logic necessity 37/
59.68
Compulsion/obligation 3/12 3/12 10/40 9/36 3/12 16/64 6/24
25/40.32
Ought Tentativeness 7/21.88 3/42.86 3/42.86 0 1/14.29 2/28.57 4/57.14 1/14.29
to Obligation 25/78.13 9/36 10/40 6/24 0 11/44 14/56 0
May Possibility 18/100 0 9/50 3/16.67 6/33.33 2/11.11 13/72.22 3/16.67
Shall Prediction 1/100 1/100 0 0 0 1/100 0 0
Because of space limit, illustrations for each model meaning of the models in Goldblatt’s translation will not be given which will be exemplified in the third
part of the appendix
5 Results and Discussion
Table 5.7 Sources of the auxiliaries used in Goldblatt’s translation
Direct translation Translation shift type A Inferred translation Translation shift type B No correspondence
Count Percentage Count Percentage Count Percentage Count Percentage Count Percentage
(%) (%) (%) (%) (%)
Can 83 32.30 5 1.95 81 31.52 50 19.46 38 14.79
Would 36 15.19 20 8.44 96 40.51 78 32.91 5 2.11
Could 63 29.30 8 3.72 100 46.51 30 13.95 14 6.51
Will 34 31.48 6 5.56 19 17.59 48 44.44 1 0.93

Should 53 54.64 4 4.12 1 1.03 26 26.80 12 12.37
Might 33 44.59 0 0 36 48.65 4 5.41 1 1.35
Must 39 62.90 4 6.45 3 4.84 9 14.52 7 11.29
Ought 26 81.25 0 0 5 15.63 1 3.13 0 0
to
May 11 61.11 0 0 3 16.67 4 22.22 0 0
Shall 0 0 0 0 1 100 0 0 0 0
Because of space limit, illustrations for each source of the modal auxiliaries applied in Goldblatt’s translation will not be given except for the occurrences that
are not found in Yang’s translation, and they are the translation shift type A for could and will, and one case of no correspondence for will
81
in modality with the modal’s meanings. The mismatch could be caused by the
different systems in English and Chinese to express tense. As we all know, it is
required in English that the expression of time should always be fulfilled by verbs
through conjugation and/or particular grammatical structures and that any utterance
should signal time. However, in Chinese, an utterance do not have to contain time
signals; rather, in considerable occasions, signification of time is dependent upon
readers’ or hearers’ logic inference based on their knowledge and experience
together with contextual clues.2 Therefore, while “will” is a time indicator of future
events in English when it can also express volition, such indicator is not obliged in
Chinese if future tense should be expressed.3
5.1.2.3 Major Differences and Similarities
As can be seen from the above results, there exist several aspects of differences
between the two translations in terms of the modal auxiliaries applied. First, in
Yang’s translation, the percentage of “could” that is used to express the modality of
“tentativeness” is the most (48.00%) whereas in Goldblatt’s, “could” is most fre-
quently used to express past tense and the modalities of its present tense form
(44.19%). Second, in Yang’s translation, the “compulsion/obligation” modality of
“must” (percentage of 61.04%) is much more common than the “logic necessity”
modality (which takes up 38.96%), while the situation is just the opposite in
Goldblatt’s translation with the ratio of 40.32 versus 59.68%. Finally, while the
modalities of “tentative inference” and “obligation” expressed by “should” only
differ from each other in frequency by less than ten percent in Yang’s translation,
the gap in Goldblatt’s translation is above fifty percent. These differences indicate
that Yang seems to show more often the tone of tentativeness and obligation. On
the other hand, in Goldblatt’s translation, “can” and “could” are two of the most
frequently used modals and the modality of “ability” appears to be more significant
in Goldblatt’s translation. The difference between the modalities of “tentativeness”
and “obligation” lies in that whilst the former indicates unauthoritativeness, the later
suggests authoritativeness. Being tentative either means that one is uncertain about
what is been said or cannot vouch for the accuracy of the statement or that one
would like to be polite to one’s illocutor and appear negotiable (Palmer 1990). This
is one feature of the so-called “women’s language” (Lakoff 1975), to sound
uncertain and be polite. The relational modality of “obligation”, on the other hand,
entails individual’s endorsement of institutionally or socially established code of
2
For example, the Chinese sentence “这部电影受到少年儿童的欢迎”, which literally means
“This film is (was/has been) well-received among teenagers.” does not include any word that
signifies tense, yet it is perfectly correct Chinese. Readers or hearers who speaks Chinese will
know the instant they read or hear it whether it relates something that is true at present or was true
in the past depending on the information in the context.
3
In fact, Chinese relies heavily on adverbs to indicate tense, be it the past, the present, the
progressive, or the future.
conduct which takes the form of subordination and obedience. The linguistic forms
of “obligation” modality thus reveal the user’s personal authority, yet runs counter
to the tone of uncertainty. Such contradiction may imply the disunity of the
translator’s gender subjectivity. On the one hand, she appears susceptible to the
general expectations of the society upon women’s (linguistic) behavior. On the
other hand, she seems to want to challenge such imposition and stereotype. The
more concern and stress over “ability” than “tentativeness” or “obligation” on
Goldblatt’s part is likely to suggest the exudation of and warrant for masculine
power, and the reluctance to appear negotiable, uncertain and obedient. However,
more textual elements that show consistent features are needed to justify this pre-
liminary discovery.
Regarding the sources for the application of the modals, The differences between
Goldblatt’s and Yang’s translations are that (1) inference is the most important
source for the application of more modals in Goldblatt’s translation than in Yang’s
(in Yang’s, there is only one modal while in Goldblatt, there are three) and (2) while
in Yang’s translation, for six modals (except “will”, “shall”, “may” and “ought to”),
the number of inference surpasses that of “translation shift type B”, in Goldblatt’s,
the numbers of modals from inference and from translation shift B are more or less
evenly matched. It means that semantically, Yang’s translation is equivalent to the
source text to larger extent than Goldblatt’s in terms of the application of modals.
In spite of the differences, there are similarities that are no less significant. First,
the functions of the modals in both translations yield largely convergent profiles.
The models are used to express mainly the same modalities; the most favored
subject option for the modals and users is invariably dominated by male characters.
Regarding the latter point, what is suggested is that in both translations, it is male
characters who are given more prominent position and larger scope to be involved
in actions and utterances. The fact that the modals in the two translations stand in
the same translational relations with the source text means the same translation
techniques are adopted by both translators with regards to modality.
5.1.3 Transitivity
Transitivity is the grammatical system by which a clause achieves the function of

the experiential meaning of organization (Halliday 2008: 170). It shows how
speakers encode in language their mental picture of reality and how they account
for their experience of the world around them. Concerned with the transmission of
ideas, transitivity is part of the ideational function of language. It carries out this
function by expressing processes. The semantic processes expressed by clauses
have potentially three components: the process itself which is expressed by the verb
phrase in the clause, the participants involved in the process, typically realized by
the noun phrases in the clause, and the circumstances associated with the process,
normally expressed by adverbial and prepositional phrases.
The study focuses on two specific structure within the transitivity system,
namely, the neutral passive form, BE + V-en, and the existential process expressed
by THERE + BE structure. The reason for choosing these forms of expression as
linguistic feature to explore gender in translation is twofold. To begin with, as
already demonstrated by Simpson (1993), Simpson and Mayr (2010) and Munday
(2008), transitivity, especially the passive form, can be vehicle of power and ide-
ology in general and gender inequality in specific. Simpson has found that passivity
is likely to be adopted in newspaper coverage of male violence against women. The
effect of the agentless passive can be that the attacker is removed from the process
and completely unspecified, indicating “a willful refusal to ‘tell it like it is’”
(Simpson 1993: 171). The study suggests that when accounts involving relation-
ships between men and women, the use of neutral passive form is likely to be not
neutral ideologically. Moreover, the two structures, BE + V-en and THERE + BE,
are manageable strings to be searched in the annotated corpus with the assistance of
corpus software (Table 5.8).
The following two sections present the use of the passive form and the
THERE + BE structure in Yang’s and Goldblatt’s translations. The THERE + BE
structure and the neutral passive form BE + V-en in both translations were first
drawn from the corpus through corpus software. Then, they were mapped onto the
source text to reveal whether and how the target texts are correspondent to the
source text. The correspondent Chinese expressions and syntactic structures, if there
are any, are categorized based on the Chinese syntactic model proposed in Liu, Pan
and Gu (2001).
Table 5.8 Correspondent source language structures of THERE + BE structure in Yang’s

translation
Frequency Percentage (%)
YOU (the Chinese character 有) structure 36 40.45
Non-human subject + predicate + object (optional) 21 23.40
Human subject + predicate + object (optional) 9 10.11
Zero subject + predicate + object (optional) 8 8.99
Non-specific human subject + predicate + object (optional) 4 4.49
Single-word or noun-phrase sentence 3 3.37
Existential construction 3 3.37
Adverbial + subject + predicate + object (optional) 2 2.25
Attribute + noun 1 1.12
No correspondence 2 2.25
Total 89 100
To save space, illustrations for each correspondent Chinese structure to the English THERE-BE
structure applied in Yang’s translation are given in the fourth part of the appendix
5.1.3.1 Transitivity in Yang’s Translation
In Yang’s translation, 89 sentences that build on the THERE + BE structure and

281 occurrences of the passive form BE + V-en are extracted from the corpus with
corpus software. 87 occurrences of the THERE + BE structure correspond to 9
types of Chinese syntactic structures while 2 of them have no correspondence of
any kind. 260 occurrences of passive BE + V-en are correspondent to 12 types of
Chinese expressions while no correspondence is found for the other 21. Tables 5.9
and 5.10 shows the results in details. The BEI and BA structures are the basic and
most common Chinese syntactic structures. The BEI structure, which constitutes the
Chinese character 被 (BEI), is the most typical Chinese passive voice expression.
The syntactic order of a BEI sentence is patient + BEI (+ agent) + verb, the agent
being optional. For example, in the sentence 我被(他)打了, which means literally I
was/have been hit (by him), “我” is the patient of the action, “他” is the agent who
performs the action, and “打” describes the action. The BA structure is the
antithesis of BEI structure, which is in the active voice although features the same
syntactic elements as the BEI structure arranged in a different order. For instance,
the above sentence can be reworded as 他把我打了, meaning He hit/has hit me. In
this sentence, the agent and patient change position from in the BEI sentence as the
adverb 被 is changed with 把.
The two structures featured in Table 5.10 do not refer exclusively to sentences
that contain the Chinese characters 被 or 把. Following Liu, Pan and Gu (2001:
753), sentences that are formed with the Chinese characters “叫”, “让” and “给” are
Table 5.9 Correspondent source language structures of passive form BE + V-en in Yang’s
translationa
BEI (the Chinese character 被) structure 26 9.25
BA (the Chinese character 把) structure 11 3.91
Verb 4 1.42
Subjectless sentence 3 1.07
Adverbial + verb 3 1.07
Noun or noun phrase 2 0.71
Total 281 100
To save space, illustrations for each correspondent Chinese structure to the English passive form
BE + V-en applied in Yang’s translation are given in the fifth part of the appendix
Table 5.10 Correspondence of THERE + BE structure in Goldblatt’s translation

YOU structure 96 33.45
Verb 6 2.09
Total 287 100
Because of space limit, examples for each correspondent Chinese structure to the English
THERE-BE structure applied in Goldblatt’s translation will not be given except for those that are
not found in Yang’s translation, which are subjectless sentence, verb and adverbial + verb, and
they are illustrated in the sixth part of the appendix
also regarded as BEI structure, and sentences that contain the character “使” are
treated as BA structure. Besides, sentences that are constituted by “受”, “由” and
“得到” are also included as BEI structure since the semantic function of these
characters are equal to that of “被” in some contexts.
It is clear from Table 5.8 that the top three correspondence of THERE + BE
structure in Yang’s translation are the Chinese YOU structure, which takes up about
half of the total number of correspondence, followed by the structure of
“non-human subject +predicate +object (optional)”, and the structure of “human
subject +predicate +object (optional)”. The reason why the Chinese YOU structure
should lead the list may be that the English THERE + BE structure is normally
rendered into Chinese YOU structure with locality phrase as the topical subject
when doing English-Chinese translation. For the sentences initiated by non-human
subject, it is either that the subject or the sentence is modified by an attribute
semantically denoting a place or a tangible spatial scope or that the subject itself
refers to locality. Another feature of this structure is that the predicate is either
adjective or the Chinese character “是”, which is literally equivalent to the English
verb BE, followed by the complement of the subject. As for a sentence initiated
with a human subject, when it is translated into the THERE + BE structure, the
effect is that the subject is rendered invisible and that the statement of the propo-
sition appears impersonal and objective, thus suggesting the possibility of deliberate
unspecification of the agent of the action.
As regards the Chinese correspondence for the passive form BE + V-en, which
is listed in Table 5.9, the first three structures that are translated the most frequently
into the English neural passive form do not include, surprisingly, the Chinese BEI
structure, which only ranks the fourth despite the fact that over a hundred BEI
structure can be retrieved from the corpus. As illustrated by the examples in the fifth
part of the appendix, Chinese allows for material process where active-voice
predicate has non-human subject or that where the subject is absent, which means
the sentence is initiated with verbs that make it rather like, but not at all, the English
imperative. In the first case, it is clear to a Chinese speaker that the act expressed by
the verb which is formally attributed to the non-human subject is actually not
fulfilled by it; rather, a human subject is always implicated, who is the real actor,
while the formal subject of the sentence is only the goal of the action. In the second
case, though the subject is omitted for the moment, normally it has already been
mentioned not far away ahead in the context and Chinese readers can always infer
it, usually in an unconscious way based on their ability of logic inference. As
regards the third most common structure, more than 20% bear the semantic feature
that the subject is the goal rather than the performer of the action expressed by the
verb predicate. This is legitimate syntax in Chinese but can only be transformed
into English passivity in semantics. For the rest some 70%, the effect of passive
voice can be either that the agent is removed from the process or that textual
coherence is achieved by keeping the focus on the same participant instead of
introducing new one (the agent) into the picture.
5.1.3.2 Transitivity in Goldblatt’s Translation
From Goldblatt’s translation, 287 occurrences of THERE + BE structure and 579

occurrences of the neutral passive voice form BE + V-en are retrieved from the
parallel corpus with corpus software. Except for the 18 occurrences of
THERE + BE structure and 34 of BE + V-en structure which are not correspondent
to any formal features in the source text, the rest are rendered from various sources.
There are ten types of Chinese formal features which are translated into the English
THERE + BE structure and eleven into the English BE + V-en passive form.
Detailed results are presented in Tables 5.10 and 5.11.
As shown in Table 5.10, There are ten types of correspondence for
THERE + BE structure in Goldblatt’s translation and the three most frequent
correspondent Chinese structures are the YOU structure, sentences initiated with
non-human subject and sentences with human subject, which take up more than
65% of all the occurrences of the correspondent Chinese structure altogether.
Meanwhile, there are 18 occurrences of THERE + BE which are not equivalent to
any source text feature.
With regard to the sources for passive form BE + V-en in Table 5.11, the top
three most frequent correspondence are the same as in Yang’s, which are
non-human subject +predicate +object, human subject +predicate +object and zero
subject + predicate +object. Put together, the three take up nearly 70% of the total
occurrences of all the correspondent structures. Among the three, further again, the
first two structures has a commanding lead than the third as the gap between the
first and the second is merely less than 3% yet the second is over three times more
Table 5.11 Correspondence of passive form BE + V-en in Goldblatt’s translation

BEI structure 47 8.12
BA structure 17 2.94
Verb 7 1.21
Total 579 100
Because of space limit, examples for each correspondent Chinese structure to the English
THERE-BE structure applied in Goldblatt’s translation will not be given except for those that are
not found in Yang’s translation, which is the structure of adverbial + verb, and it is illustrated in
the seventh part of the appendix
than the third. This means the first two types of structures are the most frequent
correspondence to the passive form. In other words, there seems to be a tendency on
Goldblatt’s part that the passive form BE + V-en is rendered systematically from
two sources while other types of sources appear somewhat random.
Major differences between the two translations in terms of the application of the
passivity and THERE-BE structure can be generalized from as follows. First, YOU
structure in Yang’s translation take up higher percentage than in Goldblatt’s.
Second, while there are nine types of correspondence for THERE + BE structure in
Yang’s translation, there are ten in Goldblatt’s, which means that the correspon-
dence of this structure in the latter is slightly more various than in the former. Still
one more difference lies with the case of “no correspondence”. In Goldblatt’s
translation, there are 18 occurrences of THERE + BE which are not formally
equivalent to any source text feature whereas in Yang’s, only two cases of this kind
are found. The differences, taken as a whole, implicate that at least in terms of the
application of this particular structure, Yang is a bit more faithful than Goldblatt.
With regard to passivity, to begin with, the form BE + V-en has slightly more
varied correspondence in Yang’s translation (13 types) than in Goldblatt’s (12
types). Then, among the top three most frequent correspondent structures, the
second and the third place are the opposite in Goldblatt’s to what are in Yang’s.
Besides, the disparity between the percentage of the first and the second most
common correspondence in Goldblatt’s is rather small, contrast with the sharp drop
from the second to the third. However, in Yang’s, the gap between rank two and
three is fairly slight. The point suggests that the application of the passive form is
more concentrated (upon two specific Chinese structures) in Goldblatt’s translation
than that in Yang’s. It means that at least in applying the neutral passive form,
Goldblatt’s strategy is less varied than Yang’s.
5.1.4 Pragmatic Features
Since the publication in 1975 of Lakoff’s seminal work Language and Woman’s
Place, the question that whether there is an absolute and natural relationship
between certain pragmatic features and femininity has been the focus of many
studies. These features, defined as attributes of a “woman’s language” by Lakoff,
include the use of hedges, the use of intensifiers such as so, speaking in italics (that
is, with more force to strengthen an utterance) etc. (Lakoff 1975: 53ff)
This section focuses on the pragmatic features of downtoners, amplifiers and
emphasizers to explore the translators’ gender performance and see whether this
features index femininity in translation. On the one hand, these features are man-
ageable in corpus search. On the other, they have drawn wide attention in soci-
olinguistic studies (Hyland 1996, 1998; Bauer and Bauer 2002; Ito and
Tagliamonte 2003; Xiao and Tao 2007; Martínez 2009), especially studies con-
cerning the interaction between gender and language use (Bradac and Mulac 1984;
Holmes 1990; Bradac et al. 1995; Dixon and Foster 1997; Graddy 2006; Ansarin
and Bathaie 2011; Sharp 2012).
The definitions and categorizations of the three types of pragmatic features,
downtoner, amplifier and emphasizer, are referred from Quirk and colleagues
(1985: 583–601). Emphasizers are a range of adverbials which are “concerned with
expressing the semantic role of modality which have a reinforcing effect on the truth
value of the clause or part of the clause to which they apply” (Quirk et al. 1985:
583). Both downtoner and amplifier fall into the category of intensifier, which refers
to adverbials that are “broadly concerned with the semantic category of DEGREE”;
it “indicates a point on an abstractly conceived intensity scale” (ibid: 589, emphasis
original). While “amplifiers scale upwards from an assumed norm”, “downtoners
have a lowering effect, usually scaling downwards from an assumed norm” (ibid:
590). Pragmatically, these means are ways to modify assertions, tone down
uncertain claims, or emphasize what is believed to be correct. To be specific,
emphasizers allow speakers to express conviction, while downtoners balance
conviction with tentativeness and caution. Amplifiers, however, are traditionally
regarded as largely characteristic of women, a vehicle of effecting emotional
influence on receivers.
The common English emphasizers given by Quirk and colleagues include:

actually, certainly, clearly, definitely, indeed, obviously, plainly, really, surely, for certain,
for sure, of course, frankly, honestly, literally, simply, fairly, just (ibid: 583)
The amplifiers discussed by them include:

absolutely, altogether, completely, entirely, extremely, fully, perfectly, quite, thoroughly,
totally, utterly, in all respects, the intensifying use of most, badly, bitterly, deeply, enor-
mously, far, greatly, heartily, highly, intensely, much, severely, so, strongly, terribly,
violently, well, a great deal, a good deal, a lot, by far, exclamatory how, the intensifying use
of more (ibid: 590-591)
And the downtoners introduced by them are:

almost, nearly, practically, virtually, as good as, all but, kind of, sort, quite, rather, enough,
sufficiently, more or less, mildly, partially, partly, slightly, somewhat, in part, in some
respects, to some extent, a bit, a little, least, only, merely, simply, just, barely, hardly, little,
scarcely, in the least, in the slightest, at all (ibid: 597-598)
These words constitute the search items into the corpus of the translation texts.
The functions of these adverbials in the translation and their mappings onto the
source are explored. The functions of the words are examined in terms of the
sentential constituents they modify. The elements been modified by the pragmatic
features are divided into two groups, emotional expressions and unemotional
expressions. Emotional expression refers to words that describe affection or senti-
ment, such as happiness, anger, excitement etc. Unemotional words, on the other
hand, are the ones that express things, actions, property etc. The two examples
below illustrate the co-occurrence of amplifier with emotional and unemotional
words respectively.
Example 3 But why does she look so unhappy? (Yang’s translation)
Example 4 The bread has been cut into thick slices so uniform they might have been
measured with a ruler. (Goldblatt’s translation)
Following that, in terms of the relationships between the adverbials and the
source text, the concern will be with the effect upon the pragmatic force or degree
achieved by the adverbials in the translation. As defined by Quirk and colleagues
(1985: 583, 590, 597), when the adverbials function as emphasizers, amplifiers and
downtoners, they are used to regulate the force or degree of the words they modify,
either strengthening the force or scaling the degree up or down. Therefore, what can
be expected from translation is the variability of the force or degree expressed by
the modifiers compared with the original force or degree expressed in the source
text, which means that translation shift occurs. The result of the shift can be
reinforcement or attenuation of the force or degree expressed in the source text, or
otherwise, the force can also be kept unchanged. Examples are taken from both
translations to illustrate the three situations.
Example 5 “他们那个管政工的局长,似乎并不这么认为。”
“Your director of political work certainly wouldn’t agree with you.” (reinforcement,
Goldblatt’s translation)
Example 6 郑子云叹息,摇头。在桌前坐下,拿过一摞信纸,坐在那里愣了好一阵神儿。
He sighs and shakes his head, then sits down at the desk and takes out his stationery. But he
just sits there thoughtfully for a moment.(attenuation, Goldblatt’s translation)
Example 7 刘玉英有点意外,又有点过意不去。Jade felt surprised, also a little embar-
rassed. (kept unchanged, Yang’s translation)
5.1.4.1 Pragmatic Features in Yang’s Translation
Emphasizers
10 emphasizers among those listed above are applied in Yang’s translation. The
occurrence and frequency of each emphasizer is shown in Table 5.12.
It is clearly demonstrated in the above table that the emphasizers the most
frequently applied in Yang’s translation are really, just and simply. The amount of
the three put together takes up the lion’s share of all the emphasizers that are found
in Yang’s translation, which is 72.65%.
According to Table 5.13, there are 113 cases where the emphasizers are used to
modify unemotional expressions. This is a definite majority, compared with the
only four cases in which the emphasizers are applied to modify emotional
expressions. In Yang’s translation, the emphasizers either reinforce the force
expressed in the source text or keep it unchanged, but never attenuate it. Moreover,
with unemotional expressions, the majority of the cases do not undergo change in
force during the transformation from the source to the target.
Table 5.12 Emphasizers Occurrence Frequency per thousand words

applied in Yang’s translation
Really 35 0.63
Just 32 0.57
Simply 18 0.32
Of course 8 0.14
Obviously 6 0.11
Indeed 5 0.09
Clearly 4 0.07
Actually 3 0.05
Surely 3 0.05
Fairly 2 0.04
Certainly 1 0.02
Total 117 2.10
Table 5.13 Function of the emphasizers applied in Yang’s translation

Reinforcement Unchanged
Unemotional 27 86
Emotional 2 2
Table 5.14 Amplifiers applied in Yang’s translation

Occurrence Frequency per thousand words
So 118 2.11
Too 67 1.20
Very 44 0.79
Well 15 0.27
Much 12 0.21
Completely 11 0.20
Quite 7 0.13
Most/highly 6 0.11
Thoroughly/badly 5 0.09
Extremely/pretty/heartily/bitterly 3 0.05
Fully/a lot/strongly 2 0.04
Absolutely/far/deeply/ 1 0.02
Total 317 5.68
Amplifiers
Among the above listed English amplifiers, 21 are used in Yang’s translation, as
presented in Table 5.14 (words of the same occurrence are presented in the same
line).
It is shown in Table 5.14 that the three most frequently applied amplifiers in
Yang’s translation are so, too and very, the occurrences of which combined take up
more than 72% of the total occurrences of amplifiers. As regards the function of the
amplifiers in Table 5.15, cases where they are used to scale up the degree of
unemotional words heavily outnumber those where they are applied to regulate the
degree of emotional words. In terms of the relationship between the translation and
the source text, for both cases that involve unemotional and emotional words,
keeping the force unchanged is far more common than strengthening it in the
translation. No case of force diminished is found.
Table 5.15 Function of the Reinforcement Unchanged

amplifiers applied in Yang’s
translation Unemotional 68 217
Emotional 11 21
Downtoners
In Yang’s translation, 14 downtoners are retrieved from the corpus with altogether
181 occurrences.
As shown in Table 5.16, the top three most common downtoners are only, just,
and enough/rather, which combined account for over 81% of all occurrences of
downtoners in Yang’s translation. Among all the occurrences of downtoners,
merely about 8% (15) are used to modify the degree of emotions while the rest are
applied to unemotional expressions, according to Table 5.17. As regards the
downtoners that are applied to unemotional words, most of them, about two thirds,
are equivalent to the force expressed in the source text. About one third of the
occurrences reduce the force originally expressed in the source text. Cases of
reinforcement are only fractional. For the cases that involve emotional words, the
majority are that where the force carried by the downtoners remains the same as in
the source text.
5.1.4.2 Pragmatic Features in Goldblatt’s Translation
Emphasizers
In Goldblatt’s translation, 14 emphasizers of the emphasizers listed above have

been applied, as shown in Table 5.18.
Table 5.16 Downtoners applied in Yang’s translation

Only 62 1.11
Just 43 0.77
Enough/rather 21 0.38
Hardly 11 0.20
At all 6 0.11
Nearly 5 0.09
A bit 4 0.07
Virtually/slightly 3 0.05
A little/practically 2 0.04
Little/partly 1 0.02
Total 181 3.24
Table 5.17 Function of the Reinforcement Attenuation Unchanged

downtoners applied in Yang’s
translation Unemotional 5 47 118
Emotional 0 3 12
Table 5.18 Emphasizers applied in Goldblatt’s translation

Just 129 1.19
Really 86 0.79
Actually/certainly 19 0.18
Simply 16 0.15
Clearly/of course 10 0.09
Obviously 9 0.08
Surely 6 0.06
A lot 5 0.05
For sure 3 0.03
Fairly/indeed/a great deal 1 0.01
Total 315 2.91

emphasizers applied in
Goldblatt’s translation Unemotional 182 1 121
Emotional 1 0 10
The top three emphasizers in Goldblatt’s translation are, according to

Table 5.18, just, really and actually/certainly. Among the top three, the discrep-
ancies in terms of both occurrence and frequency are fairly large, especially that
between rank two and three. The first two combined take up over 68% of all the
occurrences of the emphasizers used in Goldblatt’s translation.
As demonstrated in Table 5.19, most occurrences are cases in which the
emphasizers are applied to modify unemotional words while those that involve
emotional words are only fractional. In terms of the force/degree, occurrences of
emphasizers that reinforce the unemotional words are more than those that keep
them unchanged, but the ratio is around 3 to 2, not a sharp one. However, for those
applied to emotional words, force unchanged takes up an overwhelming percentage.
Amplifiers
21 amplifiers are retrieved from Goldblatt’s translation, the occurrences and fre-
quencies of which are listed in Table 5.20.
It is clear from Table 5.20 that so and too are the two amplifiers that are used
most frequently in Goldblatt’s translation and the two combined take up over 63%
of all the occurrences of the amplifiers. The third most frequent is very, which is,
however, lagged far behind the first two.
Based on Table 5.21, about 86% of the occurrences of the amplifiers are applied
to regulate the force of unemotional expressions while the rest 14% is used to
modify emotion. Cases of force reinforcement, attenuation and unchanged through
Table 5.20 Amplifiers applied in Goldblatt’s translation

So 240 2.22
Too 110 1.02
Very 49 0.45
Completely 28 0.26
Well 25 0.23
Quite/much 18 0.17
Pretty 15 0.14
Perfectly 11 0.10
Altogether/deeply/totally 6 0.06
Badly 5 0.05
Absolutely/extremely 4 0.04
Most 3 0.03
Strongly/terribly 2 0.02
Entirely/fully/thoroughly 1 0.009
Total 555 5.12

amplifiers applied in
Emotional 40 13 27
the use of amplifiers are all found in Goldblatt’s translation. For those amplifiers
modifying unemotional words, the occurrences of force unchanged are slightly
more than those of force reinforced, yet both are far more than force attenuated. As
regards those applied to emotional words, the most frequent is strengthening the
force expressed in the source and the least frequent is reducing the force.
Downtoners
There are altogether 451 occurrences of 18 downtoners in Goldblatt’s translation,

which are listed in Table 5.22.
As can be seen from Table 5.22, the downtoners just and only are most fre-
quently used than others in Goldblatt’s translation. Their occurrences account for
over 55% of all the occurrences of downtoners in the translation.
Unemotional words are the major subject of modification for the downtoners
since 436 occurrences are applied to them, as can be calculated from Table 5.23.
For both cases of unemotional and emotional words, it is the most often for the
force expressed in the source text to remain unchanged with the downtoners. For
the cases of modifying unemotional words, attenuation of the original force is a
little less often than keeping it the same, but is far more than cases of reinforcement.
Table 5.22 Downtoners Occurrence Frequency per thousand

applied in Goldblatt’s words
translation
Just 133 1.23
Only 119 1.10
Enough 41 0.38
Nearly 31 0.29
A little 24 0.22
Almost 21 0.19
At all 18 0.17
Barely 15 0.14
Slightly 10 0.09
A bit 8 0.07
Merely/sort of 6 0.06
Little/virtually 5 0.05
All but 4 0.04
Somewhat 3 0.03
Hardly/in part 1 0.009
Total 451 4.16

downtoners applied in
Emotional 1 4 10
That means keeping unchanged of the original force and the attenuation of it are
both frequent effect when downtoners are applied to unemotional words in
Goldblatt’s translation.
The differences between Yang’s and Goldblatt’s translations in terms of the prag-
matic features will be presented first, followed by the similarities.
Differences between the two translations are in four aspects. The first aspect has
to do with the frequencies of the pragmatic features. Generally, Goldblatt has used
the three pragmatic means more frequently than Yang as the frequency per thou-
sand words of the three combined is 12.20 in Goldblatt’s translation and 11.01 in
Yang’s. Yet, specifically, Goldblatt has used more emphasizers and downtoners and
less amplifiers than Yang both in terms of word types and frequency. Therefore, it
seems that Goldblatt expects to communicate more precise degrees of accuracy in
truth assessments yet Yang wanted to affect the readers with more emotional force.
This is reminiscent to certain extent of the indications from some previous studies
that males seem to be more likely to exploit lexicon associated with abstract con-
cepts and expression of caution regarding truth statements while females use more
words referencing occasions and situations where human feelings and emotions are
likely to be articulated or revealed (Schmid 2003). While Schmid’s results are based
on the presupposition that there are stereotypical topics in which males and females
are usually engaged in communicative occasions and that the linguistic features of
both genders are somewhat entailed by the topics, the fact that in translation, female
and male translators fabricate text based on and drawing from the same resources
might suggest that there could be some degree of difference in cognition between
men and women, at least in the aspects of expressing accuracy of truth and human
emotion. However, more evidence is needed if such suggestion is to be generalized
to other materials.
The second aspect of difference is to be found with the function of the pragmatic
means, whether they are used to modify emotional or unemotional words and how
much to each. Table 5.24 presents a comparison between the two translations in this
respect.
As demonstrated in Table 5.24, holistically, the difference between the two
translations in terms of the total occurrences of the pragmatic means as modifiers of
unemotional words and modifiers of emotional words seems to be too slight
(91.76% vs. 91.98% and 8.24% vs. 8.02%) to account for a substantial distinction.
However, categorically, some differences are revealed in the applications of
amplifiers and downtoners. Larger proportion of occurrences of amplifiers in
Yang’s translation is applied to unemotional words than that in Goldblatt’s while
the proportion modifying emotional words is larger in the latter than in the former.
Regarding downtoners, the proportion of occurrences used to regulate the degree of
unemotional words in Goldblatt’s translation is larger than in Yang’s whereas the
proportion that regulates emotional words in Goldblatt’s is smaller than in Yang’s.
Therefore, Yang appears to tend to tone down the degree of emotion while
Goldblatt seems to want the opposite. This difference contradicts the claim that
women’s language betrays higher degree of emotional force than men’s language.
Table 5.24 Proportion of pragmatic means to modify emotional/unemotional words in two

translations
Emphasizers Amplifiers Downtoners Total
(%) (%) (%) (%)
Yang’s translation Unemotional 113/96.58 285/89.91 170/91.89 568/
91.76
Emotional 4/3.42 32/10.09 15/8.11 51/8.24
Goldblatt’s Unemotional 304/96.51 475/85.59 436/96.67 1215/
translation 91.98
Emotional 11/3.49 80/14.41 15/3.33 106/8.02
Table 5.25 Variability of the pragmatic force or degree

Reinforcement Attenuation Unchanged
(%) (%) (%)
Yang’s translation Emphasizers 29/24.79 0 88/75.21
Amplifiers 79/24.92 0 238/75.08
Downtoners 5/2.70 50/27.03 130/70.27
Total 113/18.26 50/8.08 456/73.67
Goldblatt’s Emphasizers 183/58.10 1/0.32 131/41.59
translation Amplifiers 250/45.05 30/5.41 275/49.55
Downtoners 30/6.65 170/37.69 251/55.65
Total 463/35.05 201/15.22 657/49.74
The third aspect has to do with the variability of the pragmatic force or degree
expressed by the pragmatic means from the source text.
Table 5.25 compares the two translations in terms of the variability of the
pragmatic force or degree expressed by the three kinds of pragmatic means.
Generally, Goldblatt tends to alter the force/degree to a much greater extent than
Yang does since over half of the occurrences of the pragmatic means demonstrate
deviation in the force/degree expressed from the source text, yet more than 70% in
Yang’s keep the force/degree unchanged. More specifically, attenuation of the
force/degree in Yang’s translation only occurs with downtoners, yet involves all
three means in Goldblatt’s. This suggests that the pragmatic force/degree shows
greater variability in Goldblatt’s translation both in kind and in extent and that
Yang’s translation seems to be closer to the source text in this respect. In other
words, Yang is more faithful than Goldblatt in transferring the force/degree of the
source text.
Three aspects of major similarity can be generalized from the above discussion.
First, the two translators have both used various emphasizers, amplifiers and
downtoners to modify emotional as well as unemotional words and used more of
these means to modify unemotional than emotional words. Second, translation shift,
which takes the form of pragmatic force/degree gap between the source text and the
target text, occurs in both translations. Finally, in both translations the most fre-
quent emphasizers are the same, which are just and really; the top three amplifiers
are both so, too and very; and just, only and enough are the top three most fre-
quently applied downtoners in both translations. While the aspects of differences
might appear somewhat to be the results of translators’ idiosyncrasies, these sim-
ilarities seem to suggest the mechanism of certain discourse working behind the
translation activity. The discourse that effects the workings will be discussed in the
last part of the chapter.
5.2 Gender Representation in the Two Translations 99
5.2 Gender Representation in the Two Translations
5.2.1 Translator’s Mediation
In discussing the ideological consequences of translators’ choices, Hatim and

Mason (1997: 147) define translator’s mediation as “extent to which translators
intervene in the transfer process, feeding their own knowledge and beliefs into their
processing of a text”. They point out that translator’s mediation is itself an ideo-
logical issue, affecting both “the ideology of translating” and “the translation of
ideology”, no matter whether the intervention is consciously directed or uncon-
sciously filtered (ibid: 143–144). Translator’s scope of modifying a translation exist
at the level of lexical selection, sentence structure and discourse (ibid: 149–161).
Since both lexical choices and transitivity have been discussed in previous sections,
the focus of the present section is set on discoursal features. The translator’s
mediation is perhaps most apparent in terms of discoursal features. A host of
devices may serve as the vehicles for a discourse and provide evidence of the
translator’s conscious or unconscious performance of gender and his/her assump-
tions concerning ideological issues. The discoursal features that are investigated in
this section include the naming of characters, translational omission and the para-
textual elements.
5.2.1.1 Naming of Characters
As Cameron notes, “many feminists have made the claim that the names we give
our world are not mere reflections of reality, nor arbitrary labels with no relation to
it. Rather, names are culture’s way of fixing what will actually count as reality in a
universe of overwhelming, chaotic sensations, all pregnant with a multitude of
possible meanings” (Cameron 1990: 12). This suggests that names, whether of
people or things, represent ideological stand or beliefs rather than bare labels.
Chinese and English have quite different orders in naming persons, so translators
have to make decisions as to ways of transfer between the two orders. In a sense,
this means that translators are given space of manipulation and mediation. The
common practice in translating Chinese names into English is to transcribe the
names phonetically following the Chinese Pinyin system. However, the translator
does not necessarily have to conduct invariably in this way; s/he can rename the
characters based either on their features or personality or on the meaning of their
names such as what has been done by Yang.
Yang and Goldblatt followed rather different practice in translating the names of
the characters, especially for the major female characters. Goldblatt’s way is to
adopt the Chinese Pinyin system equally for male and female characters. He has
claimed explicitly in the translator’s preface that “[t]he Pinyin system of
Romanization has been used throughout” (Goldblatt 1989). To adopt Pinyin system
is a common practice extensively recognized in dealing with Chinese names in
translation into English, and thus Goldblatt’s way goes unmarked in terms of the
evocation of gender. In general, Yang rewrote most characters’ Chinese names
according to the Chinese Pinyin system. However, her way in rendering the names
of the major female characters is distinct and significant, a combination of
Romanization and interpretation. It is exactly as what she claimed in the translator’s
preface: “In general these are written according to the Chinese phonetic alphabet…I
have also given some of the main women characters English names.” (Yang 1987:
xii) although she did not go on to give the reason. In Yang’s translation, for the first
appearance of a major female character, a Pinyin transcription of her Chinese name
is given, yet that is followed at the same time by an English name, braced inside
two dashes, that interprets the meaning of their Chinese given names and the
character is referred to by the English name thereafter. Therefore, the journalist Ye
Zhiqiu, 叶知秋, is named Autumn, which is the meaning of the character “秋”. Her
neighbor, another major female character, Liu Yuying, 刘玉英, is given the English
name Jade since it is the connotation of the Chinese “玉”. The vice-minister’s wife
Xia Zhuyun, 夏竹筠, is renamed as Bamboo, what the Chinese “竹” in her name
refers to. Other names include Grace for He Ting 何婷, “婷” literally meaning
graceful; Joy for Wan Qun 万群, as joyfulness is the temperament of the character;
and Radiance for Yu Liwen 郁丽文, as she is depicted in the novel as a kind caring
woman who brings warmth and light to people around her.
The effects of the English names are obvious: First, they not only make the
characters appear more familiar to English-speaking readers, but also give them
more prominence compared both with the source text and with the other characters
in the novel who are not endowed with an English name. Since in the novel female
characters play relatively supporting roles to male protagonists, the prominence
they gain through the English names offset to some extent the obscurity that goes
inevitably with their subordinate status. Second, the familiarity and prominence of
position is strengthened by the positive commendatory connotations of the names.
Even the “bad” women, the spoilt lazy wife of vice-minister Zheng, Xia Zhuyun,
and the selfish female official in Zheng’s ministry, He Ting, are given positive
names as Bamboo and Grace respectively. Though generally Bamboo is denounced
as arrogant, rude and materialistic, the translator considers the blame is largely on
her husband because he is portrayed in Yang’s translation as “selfish”, cares little
about the family and gives her inadequate love. Grace puts a lot of energy into
pulling strings for her children and defends her own interest at work plotting and
maneuvering. However, she is tough, independent, believing in her own ability and
in that of her sex. So while there are faults in her that are not to be excused, her
self-reliance and belief in women’s ability is not lost by the translator.
5.2.1.2 Translational Omission
Addition and omission in translation can occur at various levels. It can be lexical,
which involves the addition and omission of one or more words; sentential, when
clauses or part of clauses are left out or added; and textual, when group of sentences
or paragraphs or even whole section/chapter can be omitted, whereas addition to

such wide extent is rare. A parallel corpus that is properly aligned at sentence level
can be searched for addition and omission at sentential and textual levels if these
changes are purposefully marked beforehand, whereas lexical addition and omis-
sion deny direct generation from parallel corpus aligned at sentence level. The
parallel corpus for this study has already been marked intentionally for translational
omission. Therefore, if there is any of this kind of translator’s mediation, it can be
retrieved with the assistance of corpus software.
While no extra information was added at either sentential level or textual level in
both translations, they both have cut out considerable stretches of text. Overall,
Yang has omitted much more text than Goldblatt does, as 3091 untranslated sen-
tences or groups of sentences4 are located in Yang’s translation yet 1278 in
Goldblatt’s. The distributions of the omission in the translations are visualized
through the distribution function of ParaConc, with the step set as 5%, which means
5% of the text is treated as a unit. The graphs generated are shown below.
Figures 5.1 and 5.2 above make a clear contrast between the distributions of the
omission in the two translations. As it appears, while in neither the omission is
evenly distributed, it is overwhelmingly so in Goldblatt’s. In Goldblatt’s translation,
more than half of the omission, i.e. 52.35%, occurs at slightly over half of the text,
while at other reaches of the bars, the percentage is never higher than 10%. Apart
from that, the bars seem to stretch and shrink, following no pattern. In Yang’s
translation, most omission occurs at the same place with the percentage being
12.62%. However, there appears a trend in Yang’s translation, as the bars stretch
gradually longer from the beginning to the peak around 55% of the text and then
draw back towards the end, with occasional regressions in the course, yet which do
not disturb the overall trend. Therefore, the omission in Yang’s translation appears
systematic.
To account for the similarity and difference between them, texts are referred to as
to see whether the exact omission demonstrates any pattern. To begin with,
regarding the part of text that suffers the most reduction in both translations, it falls
to the same chapter of the novel, chapter ten. In this chapter, the speech on business
management given by one of the major male characters as well as the depiction of
the reaction of the audience to the speech is drastically pruned through the strategies
of deletion and summarization by Yang. Yet the whole chapter is completely erased
in Goldblatt’s translation.
In Goldblatt’s translation, heavy deletion, i.e. stretches of text that include over
fifteen sentences, are where either information related to managerial or industrial
affairs or flashbacks that have little bearing on the storyline are involved. Apart
from that, other parts that are omitted include quotations of poems and famous
persons’ words, depiction of the mental activity of characters and narrator’s com-
ments on subjects that do not concern the story line. Such strategy of omission,
however, are not implemented throughout the novel on categorical basis, which
4
Strings of sentences that are cut out are counted as one omission.
Fig. 5.1 Distribution of omission in Yang’s translation
Fig. 5.2 Distribution of omission in Goldblatt’s translation
means there are quotations, Free Direct Thought or Free Indirect Thought and the
narrator’s comments which are kept and transferred into the target text. What these
features suggest is the random nature of Goldblatt’s strategy in terms of omission.
In addition, one point is worth further notice. In Goldblatt’s translation, detailed
narration of settings or scenes that constitute a reflection of the social situation and
environment of China back then is represented rather faithfully. As will be
explained in what follows, such details are part of what are omitted in Yang’s
translation.
The omission in Yang’s translation, as contrast to Goldblatt’s translation,
appears systematic. All the quotations, detailed descriptions of settings against
which activities of characters take place, flashbacks, characters’ interior mono-
logues, detailed arguments about politics and economic policy and narrator’s
comments on subjects that do not function to push the story forward underwent
severe reduction or complete erasure. Besides, some parts that give detailed
depiction of events or scenes are summarized into one or two sentences, in rather
news-report-like fashion. For instance, one episode that runs two and half pages in
the source text, which is a detailed description of the cavalier intervention by one of
the major male characters Ho Jiabing into the squabble between two passengers on
a bus, is summarized into two sentences in Yang’s translation. The summarization
reports the event and the result of Ho Jiabing’s intervention in a rather succinct
way: “To his disgust there was a row on it between a surly Beijing youth and a
Northeastern woman loaded with luggage who bumped into him. Ho could not help
intervening to defend her, but after he did the woman showed she could give as
good as she got.” The effect of the strategy of summarization is that the line of story
continues without breaks yet the details are no longer needed, not so much from the
perspective of characterization as from the development of the story. Generally,
omission appears to be a rather common strategy for Yang, as can be demonstrated
in the first graph. This renders her translation verging on an abridged version,
though the paperback translation is not defined as such. Since the novel has a theme
but no principal plot, the drastic deletion and omission renders Yang’s translation
more focused, and foregrounds to a certain extent the marriage issues and the
interrogation of male-female relations which are originally buried among other
plots around the industrial reformation.
5.2.1.3 Paratextual Elements
Genette (1997) defines the paratexts of a literary work as the productions that
“surround” and “extent” the text proper (Genette 1997: 1), but they are also what
constitute the “translator’s voice” (Hermans 1996), or translator’s “thumb-print”
(Baker 2000), in that they are an important site where the identity of a translator can
be presented and a translator’s presence is more visible. Genette categorizes
paratextual elements into two types, peritexts and epitexts: peritexts refer to the
paratextual elements that are within the same volume as the text, e.g. prefaces, notes
and afterwords; epitexts, on the other hand, refer to the “distanced elements […]
located outside the book” (Genette 1997: 5), e.g. magazine reviews, interviews with
an author. This study will only investigate the peritextual elements in the printed
volumes of the translations while disregarding epitexts, as the epitexts are hardly
accessible because of, particularly, time distance (the translations were released
almost thirty years ago in 1987 and 1989). The peritextual elements that are focused
upon include preface, afterword, footnotes and the list of characters because these
constitute all the peritexts in the printed volume of the translations.
Both translations are accompanied by a translator’s preface and a list of char-
acters. Yet the content of the preface and the form of the character introduction
differ significantly. According to Genette (1997: 197–198), the authorial preface—
in this case, the translator’s preface—has the function of ensuring that “the text is
read properly” and the objectives of the preface is to hold the readers interest and
guide them by explaining “why” and “how” they should read the text. To achieve
the objectives, author’s common practices include demonstrating the importance of
the work, providing contextual information (mentioning other related works or

situating the prefaced work within a whole in progress), giving interpretation of the
meaning of the text and so on (Genette 1997: 198–229).
In Goldblatt’s translation, the translator’s preface is composed of three para-
graphs, running less than a page. It gives a very brief introduction to the prize the
novel wins and the subject matter it interrogates, states some of the translator’s
strategies, including the deletion and the use of Pinyin system, and makes an
illustration of the Chinese terms of address Lao (老) and Xiao (小). There is neither
plot summary nor introduction to the author, which readers would usually expect
from a preface to a fictional work. Following the brief preface is a list of characters
in alphabetic order of the surnames. Description of the identity or status of each
character and the relationship between some of them is given, following the names.
The description appears insipid and business-like, noun phrases with hardly any
modifiers. For example, Chen Yongming is introduced as “manager of Morning
Light Auto Works; husband of Yu Liwen” and Yu Liwen as “doctor; wife of Chen
Yongming”. Such manner of presentation appears objective and do not reveal any
of translator’s attitude.
The preface and the presentation of the characters in Yang’s translation, on the
other hand, take quite different form. First, Yang composed a five-page long
preface. Within such spacious room of words, Yang provided sufficient information
about the author, the work and the background, her own comments incorporated.
The preface initiates with an introduction to the author Zhang Jie, her family
background, her life experience and her career as a professional writer. The
introduction is followed by a review of Zhang Jie’s reputation-establishing work,
爱是不能忘记的 (Love Must Not Be Forgotten). Then, the work Chenzhong De
Chibang is introduced, not so much an outline of the plot as a comment and
discussion of the theme, the main ideas, the social value of the work and the social
reception of it in China after publication. In addition, two other works of Zhang Jie
are also mentioned. One is 方舟 (The Ark), acclaimed as a feminist novella; the
other is 条件尚未成熟 (The Time is Not Yet Ripe) which focuses on similar subject
as Chenzhong De Chibang. The final part of the preface introduces the translation
strategies, giving explanation to the parts that got cut off and the discrimination of
the Chinese names.
In general, the preface suggests the translator’s maneuver of potential readers’
perception of the thematic matter of the novel, amounting to lending a feminized
tone to the novel. First, although the translator admits that the “central theme” is
“the modernization of Chinese industry” (Yang 1987: ix), and the Chinese marriage
system is not the central idea of the novel, she parallels the central with the latter
and draw readers’ attention by highlighting it in the preface: she argues that “the
inadequacy of the present marriage system is highlighted, this time mainly from the
viewpoint of men” (ibid: x), and points out that “[i]n accounts like these Zhang Jie
makes clear her belief that men and women must together overthrow the outdated
aspects of traditional moral values and establish genuine socialist ethics if they are
to find fulfillment and happiness in their personal relations” (ibid: xi). By so doing
she brings the marriage system, which might otherwise be overlooked, to the fore
and frames readers’ interpretation of the text. In addition, the translator spares
considerable room to introduce the author’s other works that discuss and tackle
female and male relations and marriage, providing contextual information in order
to foreground the Chinese marriage system that appears to be a recurring theme in
Zhang Jie’s novel. For instance, she gives a brief introduction to and interpretation
of 爱是不能忘记的 (Love Must Not Be Forgotten), a novel that describes marriage
as what determines one’s, especially women’s, quality of life, and explains that
“Chinese moral values today are a mixture of socialist ethics and traditional con-
ventions. And nowhere is the influence of tradition stronger than in the field of
marriage” (ibid: ix). Thus, the translator constructs the author as a female writer
who is particularly concerned with Chinese women’s marriage and life, but, at the
same time, the translator also incorporates her own understanding of the issue,
revealing her own stand.
The list of characters appearing after the colophon page is another piece of
evidence which suggests that the translator intentionally gives more attention to the
female characters than otherwise. To begin with, this list was not featured at all in
the ST, which means this page was ‘added’ in the process of translation. In the TT,
a list of principal characters appears in the order of their appearance in the story.
The list introduces thirty-two major characters, and these characters are the repre-
sentatives of the competitive parties involved in the economic reform, including the
leaders in the department of heavy industry or the factory attached to the depart-
ment, several young workers from the factory as well as the wives and female
friends of the department leaders. Though it is not uncommon practice in general
that a list of characters is placed in a book, as it helps readers preview and
understand the key players of the plot, however, in the case of Leaden Wings, this
list also features translator’s comments or evaluation on some of the most important
characters. The entry information for each character in the list not only explains the
character’ identity, but is also revealing about his/her personality and life experi-
ence, which naturally features the mediator’s value judgment. For example, in the
list, Bamboo, the wife of vice minister Zheng Ziyun, is described as “Xia Zhuyun,
Zheng’s wife, a minor official but rarely goes to work”. Here the adjunct infor-
mation led by the adversative conjunction “but” suggests where the mediator wants
to draw the readers’ attention and the attempt to make readers wonder why this
character seldom goes to work. In another instance, which reads, “Feng Xiaoxian,
director of political work in the ministry, a conservative”, the complement “a
conservative” immediately defines the image and fictional status of the character.
The mediator’s evaluation and attitude is demonstrated by linguistic expressions,
too. For instance, Grace, another female character mentioned in the list, is intro-
duced as “Li Ting, a malicious section chief whose husband is an invalid”, where
the translator’s evaluation and attitude are featured through the adjective “mali-
cious” and the attributive clause (“whose husband is an invalid”). While the neg-
ative evaluation amounts to explicit influence on readers’ judgment toward Grace,
the attributive clause may evoke wondering as to whether there is a certain causal
connection between Grace’s marital life and her personality, which may thus guide
readers’ reflection upon the relationship between women’s family life and their
social life. Similar examples include, the mediator’s comment on Commissioner

Fang: “Fang Wenxuan, senior to Feng in the ministry and better-educated. Loves
Joy but won’t leave his wife”, which also shows the mediator’s interpretation of the
character is linked to the relationship between men and women, through evaluative
(“better-educated”) and implicative attitude towards Fang’s marriage values (“but
won’t leave his wife”). Last but not least, the list of characters is not arranged in the
usual alphabetic order, but in order of character appearance, thereby female leading
characters appearing higher on the list. As a result, five out of six major female
characters appear in the first half of the list of thirty-two characters, and the two
most important appear on the top and third on the list. In this way, the female
characters do not get overshadowed by the male characters, although they are not
dominant figures in the story and the number of female characters is out of pro-
portion compared with that of male characters. All together, these shifts make the
female characters more visible, and give them more weight than it appears to be in
the ST.
While preface and list of characters are the only two paratextual means adopted
in Goldblatt’s translation, there are more in Yang’s. One is afterwords, the other
footnotes. Afterword is another paratextual element, as “postface” in Genette’s
(1997) term, that serves as “curative, or corrective” (Genette 1997: 239) informa-
tion to the preface. “[P]laced at the end of a book and addressed to a reader who is
no longer potential but actual, the postface certainly makes more logical and more
relevant reading for that reader” (ibid: 238). The piece of afterword which couples
up the preface continues to feminize the novel. The afterword was written by Delia
Davin, a close friend and a colleague of Yang. Davin was then a researcher from the
Centre for Women’s Studies at the University of York, and now a retired professor
from the University of Leeds whose main publications and academic activities
center on issues concerning China and gender issues in China, both of which
suggest that the afterword is written from the perspective of women’s studies and
gender studies. Not surprisingly, the afterword concentrates exclusively on the
discussion of female characters and marriage in China. Although female characters
in the novel take only subordinate positions and are not involved much in the main
plot, Davin pays particular attention to their presence, as can be seen in her
statement, which says, “[a]s Zhang is seen as a strong and assertive woman writer it
is natural that we should look at her women characters with special interest” (Davin
1987: 175). She argues that the women characters in the novel are “shock[ing] or
disappoint[ing] rather than inspir[ing]” (ibid) because Zhang “appears to see a
‘good’ relationship with a man as the best guarantee of happiness for a woman”,
although she “repeatedly attacks the conventions of marriage as it exists now in
China” (ibid: 179). Davin explains that “Zhang Jie’s views on women’s oppression
are clearly different from those of western feminists” (ibid: 180). To conclude,
though the afterword was not written by the translator, it also contributes to framing
the translation in a way that appears more feminism-oriented.
Yang’s translation also adopts the strategy of footnoting to give explanations to
information related to Chinese history and culture that are likely to be foreign to
English-speaking readers. These information include proper nouns, such as “大庆”,
“新疆” and “邓小平”, and presuppositions that are common knowledge of Chinese
people yet may posit obstacles for understanding for foreign readers. Examples for
the latter include the footnote for boy’s shoes that can be washed with detergent.
The reason for this footnote is perhaps because in the West, shoes are mostly made
of leather which are polished rather than scrubbed in water. Another footnote
explains the “earthquake shelter put up in 1976”. The traumatic disaster of
Tangshan earthquake presupposed in the expression is familiar with common
Chinese readers of the 1980s. However, for Western readers, the background
information is highly likely to be unheard of and thus needs to be made explicit. For
this one, Goldblatt adopts the translation technique of explicitation, i.e. he renders
the information entailed in the source text expression
explicit as “earthquake shelter erected after the 1976 Tangshan earthquake”.
However, Goldblatt translates other Chinese culture-specific expressions in a literal
fashion which seems to suggest his confidence in the target readers. As has been
noticed previously, the translation strategy of footnoting is often adopted by fem-
inist translators, as a way to reveal their presence, make their voice heard and
promote feminist ideas about language and gender. Although the footnotes in
Yang’s translation do not concern gender issue, they nonetheless represent the
translator’s voice and identity and constitute a translation related discourse that
departs from traditional, male-dominated aesthetics of translation.
In general, Yang’s translation demonstrates heavier translator’s mediation than
Goldblatt’s. With regard to the naming of characters, translational omission and the
adoption of paratextual means, while Goldblatt made no or limited attempts, Yang’s
strategies have effect on the overall style of the work, making it more conducive to
her concern both about China’s industrial modernization and the predicament
confronting Chinese women and rendering her identity of translator visible.
5.2.2 Translation of “人” or “人类”
One typical example of the sexist use of the English language that has invited the
common concern of feminists and scholars doing gender and language studies is the
generic use of “man”, “men” and “he” to refer to both males and females. Hellinger
and Bußmann (2002: 10) argue that the “asymmetries involved here, that is the
choice of masculine/male expressions as the normal or ‘unmarked’ case with the
resulting invisibility of feminine/female expressions are reflections of an underlying
gender belief system, which in turn creates expectations about appropriate female
and male behavior”. The Chinese words “人” and “人类”, which include both
males and females, are semantic equivalents to the English “person”, “human”,
“individual” or “people”. When the Chinese words are used with no specific gender
reference, there is the possibility in translation of evoking the sexist use of the
English “man” or “he” as equivalent to them if the translator does not put up
conscious resistance to linguistic sexism of this kind which, subtle and unobtrusive,
is usually registered mostly subliminally without the conscious control of the

language users.
The occurrences of “人” together with its collocates such as “类” (literally
meaning kind), and “们” (plurality indicator in Chinese) are retrieved from the
corpus, and their correspondence in both translations are checked. The use of “man”
or “men” as equivalent to these Chinese words to refer to human beings in general
or groups of people who are mixed-sex occurs in both translations. Examples are as
follows:
Yang’s translation: In the Party school he had learned that men had evolved from apes.
Obviously foreigners were closer to apes, and the Chinese were more advanced.
Yang’s translation: Such men simply wanted to get by – what political work could they do?
Goldblatt’s translation: But what sort of “political” work can be expected from someone
who has a “get-by” attitude toward his social responsibilities and obligations, or who only
quotes Party dogma when making a report or giving a speech?
Goldblatt’s translation: “No!” I say. “Life is the eternal struggle of Man with his fate.”
In Example 8, the Chinese character “人” which obviously refers to human

beings in general is translated as “men” by Yang. In Examples 9 and 10, both
translators use the masculine forms as correspondence to the character “人”, which,
in the original context, refers to any people who do not hold a positive attitude
towards responsibilities. In Example 10, Goldblatt capitalized the word “man” to
indicate its particular usage here as a generic noun referring to human beings
collectively, compounded with the masculine possessive pronoun “his” of the same
function. This is exactly what comes under fierce attack from feminists and one of
the primary subjects of the “language reform” effort which aims to eliminate the
sexist use of language in institutions (Mills 2008).
Although the amount of the generic use of “man” and “men” as equivalent to
“人” with or without its collocates in both translations is small, their inclusion is
substantial enough to alter the overall picture because they index conclusively a
strong yet most subliminal sexist discourse that is likely to go unnoticed. The
translation strategy suggests the conscious or subconscious sexism that takes the
form of the use of masculine terms to cover both sexes. Though Yang’s translation
shows feminist concern, as indicated from her conscious paratextual strategies
when she placed extra emphasis to represent the female characters and highlight the
feminist themes of Zhang Jie’s works, she is, nevertheless, still under the
deep-rooted patriarchal spell that exerts insidious effect upon her translation per-
formance without, perhaps, her own conscious notice.
5.2.3 Translation of Gendered Discourses
There are depictions of female and male characters in the source text that are
gendered, which is to say, these expressions distinguish men and women, posi-
tioning them in different ways so that their actual behaviors and the expectations on
them are distinct. Examples of this gendered discourse from the source text include:
The two passages above explicitly effect gender, as they position and discour-
sally constitute woman and man in culture-specific and conservative ways. They
also indicate “the workings of a particular set of ideas about gender in some
segment or segments of society” (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 2003: 42), in this
case, the workings of the set of ideas about gender particular to the Chinese society
in the 1980s.
66 stretches of text that construct gender most explicitly are spotted. Indeed,
there are in the source text more gendered discourses. In addition to these gendered
discourses, there are also words and phrases that represent gender discourse in the
novel. However, as words or phrases are scattered and embedded in sentences, they
are less conspicuous than sentence or group of sentences. Therefore, for the
moment, the study focuses only on the 66 sentences or groups of sentences.
The 66 texts did not all get translated in both translations: Yang translated 50 of
them and Goldblatt translated 63. There are 50 out of the 66 stretches which are
translated by both translators which demonstrate clear differences. Generally
speaking, Yang appears to be making a conscious effort to ward off possible sexism
and bias against women and denigration targeted particularly at women and to
evaluate men’s behavior from a feminist-like5 stance whereas Goldblatt endorses a
patriarchal gender belief system which entails male bias and stereotypes towards
women.
Following are examples as illustrations of the translators’ distinctive stance
towards the male and female characters depicted in the novel and women and men
in general.
5
Yang has never claimed herself as a feminist in her life. Although her translation strategy appear
most feminist, she is not regarded a feminist translator in China.
Yang’s translation: But of course she mustn’t; her hair was turning grey.
Goldblatt’s translation: But no, not a woman whose hair is already turning gray.
A scenario at the very beginning of the story relates that one of the major female
characters Ye Zhiqiu, a middle-aged professional reporter, has just restored to
health from an illness, and is suddenly caught in a mood to play some prank. The
source text in example is what follows immediately after the scenario. The source
text, in the form of Free Indirect Thought, indicates her resignation and slight upset
through the discourse marker “唉” (literally meaning alas) and the adverbial “毕
竟” (equivalent to after all). Yang’s translation appears rather matter-of-fact and
sounds common-sense, since it is common code of conduct for most middle-aged
adults to not behave like primary school students, be they female or male.
Goldblatt’s translation, however, is ambiguous. It can be interpreted either as
ageing women are not allowed to behave so, yet men can, no matter how old they
are, or as younger women are still possible to do so. Suppose “a woman” is replaced
with “someone” for his translation, the gendered tone carried by the former is
immediately rendered obvious. Goldblatt’s translation, which sounds authoritative
and unquestionable with double negation, reveals the translator’s (subconscious,
perhaps) male expectation upon the proper ways of behavior for women.
Yang’s translation: All women had their foibles: maybe that was their attraction.
Goldblatt’s translation: All women seem a bit shallow, but maybe that’s their appeal.
A depiction of the inner monologue of Wang Fangliang, a cynical yet cheery

male vice-minister, the source text enacts a rather typical gender stereotype, a
common patriarchal view of men towards women. The contrast between the two
translations is underlined by two pairs of words: one is “foibles” against “shallow”,
the other is “attraction” versus “appeal”. For the first pair, reference to the Collins
Cobuild Advanced Dictionary generates the definition for “foible” as “a habit or
characteristic that someone has which is considered rather strange, foolish, or bad
but which is also considered unimportant” and the adjective “shallow” as “If you
describe a person, piece of work, or idea as shallow, you disapprove of them
because they do not show or involve any serious or careful thought”. While “foible”
is mainly a word denoting personal features or habit that may vary from person to
person and arouse different evaluation from different person, “shallow” carries
absolutely derogatory meaning, a negative evaluation towards the person modified
by it and denotes a feature that tends to be shunned by people at large. To explain
the second pair, a search in the British National Corpus6 is conducted. As the
corpus concordances reveal, when the topic is the feature of person, “attraction” is
the word much more frequently used, especially in fictions, where its most frequent
collocates include physical, sexual, mutual, and powerful etc. “Appeal”, on the
other hand, is not so much a common word for fiction as for news report because of
its connotation of lawsuit and political campaign. However, when the topic involves
sexual relationship, “appeal” is more salient than “attraction” because it forms a
fixed phrase with the word “sex” as “sex appeal”. Therefore, if the topic involves
both male and female and the word “appeal” is used, despite its far more frequent
usage in the field of legal activities and politics, it is more likely to evoke the
association of sex in the mind of the receiver than if it is “attraction” that is used,
because the latter carries more or less aesthetic connotation than mere practical
function. The difference in meaning between the two words in the two pairs con-
stitutes index to different gender construction. Yang’s translation evades the neg-
ative judgment oriented towards women with a replacement that includes all human
beings rather than any particular group and thus positions man and woman on an
equal footing. Goldblatt, however, kept the pejorative evaluation of women and
compounded it with a sex tone.
Yang’s translation: This didn’t fool her mother. On the boys’ birthdays or at
festivals she helped her daughter out with a little money in ways which wouldn’t
hurt her son-in-law’s pride.
Goldblatt’s translation: But nothing ever escaped the sharp eyes of her mother,
who always managed to find a way to help out: on the children’s birthdays or on
New Year’s, she gave her daughter what she could, always in such a way as to keep
her son-in-law in the dark. The last thing in the world she wanted was to destroy his
self-respect.
The source text relates acts of maternal affection expressed by Jade (Liu
Yuying)’s mother as well as the predicament confronting her. She feels embar-
rassed about her deeds of care and love for her daughter’s family because her
son-in-law would regard them as charity. The translators betray their respective
attitude towards Jade’s husband through the different rendering of the Chinese “自
尊心”. While the word in the source text does not carry judgment, its two equiv-
alents bear different appraisal value. Though the word “pride” possesses the
6
https://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/.
meaning of sense of respect, it is dubious in Yang’s translation whether sense of

respect is really what is intended for since the word has another meaning which is,
according to Collins Cobuild dictionary, the feeling that people have that they are
better or more important than other people. This latter interpretation is more likely
because the husband, who is leader of a plant, is depicted in the novel as rather
bigoted and a little arrogant. Though different target readers may have their way in
interpreting, the translator has already had her opinion indicated by the word she
chose, a subtle sarcasm to the somewhat unreasonable and blind confidence of the
male character. Goldblatt’s choice is not at all ambiguous in meaning for the word
“self-respect” possesses no other sense than a proper sense of one’s own dignity and
integrity. The clearly absolute positive meaning of this word suggests that the
translator gives approval for such way of dealing with life because it shows a man’s
dignity and integrity even if it means the wife and children must suffer. What is
implied is that others who go against this way amount to destroyers of such morale,
as suggested by the collocate of “self-respect” in Goldblatt’s translation, “destroy”.
Therefore, though tacit permission is given to the mother-in-law’s helping hand, yet
an undesirable situation for men is warned as to the possibility of women’s
intrusion into men’s world and disturbing their ways of doing things.
Yang’s translation: She had taken the heavy burden on her weak shoulders without a
word of complaint. Perhaps women are tougher and more self-sacrificing than men.
Goldblatt’s translation: She, on the other hand, had willingly sacrificed everything.
Maybe women are actually stronger than men, more determined, and more capable
of self-sacrifice!
The two translations for the laudatory remarks on Jade in the source text are
different in two major aspects. First, Yang starts without the first sentence of the
source text while Goldblatt does not translate the second one. The omission in
Yang’s translation suggests that she seems not in agreement with the proposition
stated by the first sentence (which literally means she, devoted everything she has
without complaint). What is presupposed by the proposition is that women are
supposed to be committed to their husbands and families body and soul. They
should appear obedient to their husband and devoted to familial affairs without
grudge. Such imposition upon women for the interest of men is harsh of course
from a feminist point of view and, from a more detached perspective, somewhat
idealistic because no human being can be all for others and in an absolutely willing
manner. Meanwhile, the novel narrates that prior to the remarks a quarrel breaks out
between Jade and her husband and Jade is upset and grumbles. But as a married
woman with children, there seems to be no other option for her. Therefore, the idea
expressed in the sentence both bears ideological impositions from a patriarchal
society and falsifies the actual situation. The second sentence, on the other hand,
states mainly what the real (in the novel) situation is, i.e., Jade has to take up the
whole family because her husband is ill in hospital. The sharp contrast between
“heavy” and “weak” creates the image of a resolute and tough woman. Goldblatt’s
decision on what to keep and what to delete implies his endorsement of the tra-
ditional value that subordinates women to men’s interest. The logic behind the
decision is that what is stated in the first sentence is a necessary condition of, and
therefore entails, what is stated in the second (yet fulfilling the deeds described in
the second sentence does not necessarily mean being up to the requirement put
forward in the first) so that the second is rendered somewhat redundant in logic and
consequently possible to be deleted. The second difference that indexes different
gender representation lies with the translations of the Chinese phrase
in the third sentence. Goldblatt’s translation is quite
interesting as he conducts a disguised replacement of concept. While the source text
refers to a merit and human virtue which is not so much innate as a result of
personal cultivation, Goldblatt defines it as a kind of ability with the word “ca-
pable”. The word is defined in dictionary as “having the ability required for a
specific task or accomplishment”. The adoption of the word is equal to claiming
that the reason why women are more self-sacrificing than men is that they are in
possession of the ability whereas men are likely to be not equipped with, or suffer
inadequacy in, such ability required to perform deeds that must cost their personal
interests or well-being for the sake of others. Therefore, men are not to blame while
there is no so much to be praised in women because it is only a matter of difference
in ability for some specific task rather than the result of purposeful choice. In this
way, Goldblatt’s translation provides an explanation for many heroic deeds ever
performed by women, a male-centric interpretation that is likely to disappoint many
members from the opposite sex group.
Yang’s translation: Too bad the army no longer had women generals, or she could
have led troops as well as any man.
Goldblatt’s translation: Too bad there has never been a female general in the army.
She’s confident she could do as well as any man if she was given the chance.
The source text represents the discontent of Grace (He Ting) towards social
restraints upon the possible social positions for women in the form of Free Indirect
Thought. Though the character to whom the thought is attributed is not be depicted
as feminist, such way of interrogating the social institutions that structure the status
of women in way that reduces women into subordination or oblivion is, beyond
doubt, reflection of the questioning from the writer for whom novel characters are
the mouthpieces. One significant difference between Yang’s and Goldblatt’s
translation is to be found in their respective rendering of the Chinese clause
. The Chinese word “现在” (literally
nowadays/now/at the moment) in the clause presupposes that there were once the
practice in military forces of assigning women to senior positions. Indeed, in
Chinese history there were women who made contributions at critical historical
points as leaders of armies in battle fields. Yang’s version is largely a literal
translation. Goldblatt’s translation, “there has never been”, however, makes a
crucial alteration equal to falsification of the fact that, at least in Chinese history,
there were women generals who served in armed forces. This denial of fact
undisputedly betrays Goldblatt’s bias against women, which illustrates in an elo-
quent way the workings of gender ideology in patriarchal society.
Yang’s translation: But marriage is a gamble.

Goldblatt’s translation: For women, marriage is a gamble at best.
This example again is free indirect quotation of the thought of Grace, which
apparently is the author’s opinion expressed through the mind of her character upon
the contingence of women’s fate upon their marital relationship with men. As Davin
(1987: 179) suggests, Zhang Jie sees a good relationship with a man as the guar-
antee of happiness for a woman. However, Zhang Jie’s view concerning marriage,
which is likely to be representative of most Chinese women, is not common to
western feminists. While Goldblatt’s translation happily shows approval, Yang’s
translation suggests her disagreement. The extra adjunct “for women” in
Goldblatt’s translation, which is absent in Yang’s, provides clue to the modification
of the woman-man relation in Yang’s translation. Without the specification that the
application of what is defined for marriage is to women only, Yang’s translation
implies that marriage is a gamble as equally for women as for men so that the
happiness of either party is contingent upon the other. In other words, the man and
the woman engaged in marital relation stand in mutual influence rather than when
one (the man) overwhelmingly and exclusively exerts over the other (the woman).
The minor change that Yang makes to the source text appears major in that it puts
women and men on an equal footing in marriage, which amounts to a challenge to
the traditional view on the familial roles and functions of men and women both in
China and in the west.
Yang’s translation: He had wanted, selfishly, to improve his image. He could talk in a
scientific way and understood Marxist theories, yet his own conduct was governed by
old conventions. Why was he so concerned about his image? Behind his devotion to
the cause lurked a hankering for fame. He ought to admit that this was why he had
suppressed his instincts and natural desires. He lacked Yuanyuan’s courage.
Goldblatt’s translation: It was for himself, to create a flawless image, to make himself
appear larger than life. All his theorizing about scientific Marxism and society only
masked the fact that he lived his personal life in accordance with the old ways. Why did
he feel he had to appear larger than life? Was it possible that behind his professional
dedication there lurked a hunger for personal fame? Of course it was possible. Why not
have the guts to face up to the fact that he’s forsaken his own natural instincts to make
himself appear saintly, halo and all. He lacks Yuanyuan’s courage.
The source text is a final lash upon one major male character, Zheng Ziyun, who
is a reformer and to be admired at work, yet lives a lie at home. Yang’s attitude
towards the character is clearly showed through the adoption of the word “selfish”,
correspondent to the phrase “为了他自己” which literally means for himself.
Being for oneself does not necessarily mean that others are excluded and is not equal
to “being selfish”. The translator obviously added her own judgment and made the
criticism from the perspective of a woman and wife towards Zheng’s lacking of
care for his wife and family. In this point, Goldblatt made a literal translation.
His translation of the following information is more significant. In his transla-
tion, the rhetorical question and the following affirmative response in the source text,
(which means literally Was there not a desire for personal fame behind the devotion
to the cause? Yes, there was!) was changed which results in shifting from certainty to
possibility. Thus, according to Goldblatt’s translation, Zheng may be after personal
fame, but there is also the possibility that he is not. Consequently, the solid ground
upon which to censure him disappears and his professional dedication is still not
yielded to ulterior motivation. Therefore, Goldblatt’s translation literally alters the
keynote as Zheng is portrayed as a man dedicated to his cause at the expense of
natural instincts rather than one that pays his family life as the price for his own
fame, although the latter interpretation is what the source text attempts to convey.
The final examples are the translators’ translations of Examples 12 and 13

mentioned previously, two passages typical of gender construction.
Yang’s translation: Nothing is more agonizing for a woman than ugliness. There was
nothing grotesque about any of Autumn’s features, but taken together they made her
one of the ugliest women alive. Her hair, in keeping with her character, was a thick,
wiry mane. It looked old-fashioned too, as she refused to have it thinned out or styled.
It stuck out in all directions, and from a distance looked like a soldier’s helmet. She had
no feminine curves or charm either. Her square shoulders were like a tree stump hewn
with an axe. No man in his right senses would marry such a woman.
Goldblatt’s translation: Nothing is harder for a woman to bear than the curse of
ugliness. Taken individually, there’s nothing wrong with Ye Zhiqiu’s features, but
overall, there are surely few women as ugly as she. Her hair matches her character—
coarse, shaggy and wiry, unstylish. Yet she refuses to let a hairdresser give it a more
modern look or thin it a little. Short and bushy, it sticks out in all directions, like a
soldier’s helmet seen from afar. She has no feminine curves, no glamour. Her square
shoulders make her look like an aging tree stump hewn by a woodcutter—hewn not
sawed. No man in his right mind would marry a woman like that.
A rather detailed description of the appearance of the female character Ye Zhiqiu,

the source text successfully represents the image of an ugly woman. Both transla-
tions have made faithful representation of her ugliness. Yet the translators’ different
orientations toward the ugliness are revealed through some appraisal words.
Ugliness for women, as Yang sees it, is something that can cause painful feelings,
i.e. “agonizing”. For Goldblatt, on the other hand, it is the hardest thing to bear
because it is a “curse”. Goldblatt’s translation thus enhances the degree of unde-
sirability not a little compared with the source text, while Yang keeps it largely the
same. Compatible with the tenor, the string of four adjectives describing Ye’s hair in
Goldblatt’s translation, “coarse, shaggy and wiry, unstylish”, all connote grotesque
visual as well as tactile impact. For Yang, nothing of Ye’s features is grotesque,
including her hair style. The word “mane” in her translation set the tone which is by
no means negative. A search of “mane” in BNC reveals that the word appears in
contexts evoking positive image of beautiful women or energetic men far more often
than otherwise. Its collocates in BNC include beautiful, luxuriant, curly, lovely,
abundant, magnificent, rich, glossy and bright etc. all with implication of energy and
vitality. Another contrast between the two translations lies with the English corre-
spondence to the Chinese word “魅力”. The word “charm” in Yang’s translation is
defined in Collins Cobuild dictionary as “someone who has charm behaves in a
friendly, pleasant way that makes people like them”. Thus having no charm means
the person usually does not appear affable, hardly able to gain popularity. Goldblatt’s
selection is the word “glamour”, which means, reference from the same distionary,
“the quality of being more attractive, exciting, or interesting than ordinary people or
things”. This dramatic-sounding word presupposes the proposition that women are
supposed to look glamorous in the eyes of men, and if they do not, it would be
a “curse” for them, a “curse” from the society as a whole where the aesthetic
criteria are loaded with male power. The two translations for the last but one sentence,
(literal translation: Her shoulder is square, like an old tree stump,

hewn by a woodcutter instead of sawed.) form one more contrast. Yang’s strategy
here is doing largely a literary translation. However, Goldblatt’s translation changes
the message. In Goldbaltt’s translation, the analogy originally made between shoulder
and tree stump is expanded to between the whole feminine body and tree stump
through the expression “make her look like”, an obvious derogation of the whole
image of the character. In a word, Yang’s translation portrays a woman who is tough,
energetic and firm, an image of a woman who departs from traditional patriarchal
standards of beauty, softness and dependence. Yet the image that appears under
Goldblatt’s pen is a woman who is sheer ugly, gloomy and stubborn, running counter
to a male’s standard in women’s appearance.
Yang’s translation: In summer he liked to unbutton his shirt and roll his vest up to
his armpits, rubbing his chest as if soaping himself in a bath, or he might roll up his
trousers to massage his hairy legs. In winter he took off his shoes and kneaded his
toes. All this was a conditioned reflex during meetings. When not in meetings or
talking he gave an impression of depth and inscrutability as now.
Goldblatt’s translation: In the summer months he keeps his tunic unbuttoned and rolls
his undershirt all the way up to his armpits. He is forever rubbing his hairy chest with his
hands, as though lathering himself up in a bath, keeping it reasonably free of grime.
When he isn’t rubbing his chest, he is rolling up his pant legs as high as they go, so he can
rub his hairy legs with both hands. When winter arrives, making such activities
impracticable, he removes his cloth slip-ons—he doesn’t like leather shoes or any shoes
with laces because putting them on and taking them off is too much trouble—and
scratches between his toes; fortunately, it is too cold for him to take off his socks. These
quirks of his, which only appear during meetings, like conditioned reflexes, possibly
surface because he is so absorbed in the topics discussed at the meeting. At other times he
gives the impression of being deep, shrewd, and unpredictable. Like now, for instance.
The source text in the above example gives a vivid depiction of a negative yet
traditional image of Chinese men. Yang’s translation made deletions again, as a
strategy she consistently took throughout the text, and Goldblatt followed the
source text in every step. One contrast worth notice is their rendering of the Chinese
expression “搓脚指头缝” which literally means to rub between the toes. In Chinese
culture, this action is considered dirty, disgusting and ill-mannered, and if con-
ducted in public, as described in the novel, it would be regarded as particularly
vulgar and ignominious. To represent the action, Yang used the phrase “kneaded
his toes” while Goldblatt opted for “scratches between his toes”. To adopt the word
“knead” seems peculiar here because it is a neutral word referring simply to the
movement of pressing or squeezing with one’s fingers. Thus “knead toes” appears
rather like doing massage to them, resulting in a departure in meaning from the
source text. “Scratch between” catches the meaning of the source text because the
word “scratch” entails itching of skin which is the symptom of beriberi, an ailment
that is considered to be caused by lack of personal hygiene in China. Goldblatt
regarded this behavior as “quirk”, which is his translation of the Chinese word “习
惯” (Yang omitted it). While “习惯” in Chinese means habit, a neutral word,
“quirk” bears the translator’s interpretation and evaluation. Viewing it as odd and
unusual, the translation indicates cultural gap, evading the vulgarity of the male
image represented in the source text. In general, Yang’s translation appears to be
fairly objective narration deprived of any explicit judgment, whereas Goldblatt’s
translation leads the readers to a different interpretation of the male image, an
attempt to disguise ill manner as eccentricity, with “quirk” as a prompt.
As can be concluded from these examples, Yang tends to modify the gendered
discourses that denigrate women in general and avoid expressions that effect
unfavorable images of women or expressions that are deeply tinted in “man-made
language”. Goldblatt’s translation, however, manifests clearly his male gaze at and
bias against women. Words such as “naïve schoolgirl”, “foolish” and “frail” appear
in Goldblatt’s translation as modifiers of women characters, but are nowhere to be
found in Yang’s. For discourses that depict males, the two translators follow still
different strategy. While Yang either appear either detached, leaving the readers to
make their own judgment, or critical, in an even more straightforward fashion than
the author, Goldblatt tends to cover and polish the tarnish.
5.3 Discourse Constitutive of Translators’ Gender

Performance
The translations by Yang and Goldblatt been compared from a series of aspects, the
manners of the two translator’s gender performance emerges by piecing together
the features in each aspect. While different dimensions of language performance
may yield apparent conflicting results, revealing the disunity within individual
translator’s subjectivity as well as gender differences between the translators, there
are also points of convergence between the two translators’ language use which
indicates dimensions of gender identities built on shared ground rather than
divergence. Both similarities and differences between the gender performance of the
two translators suggest the workings of discourses. When there is paradox in the
gender performance of a translator, it presupposes the workings of conflicting
discourses. In this section, the discourses that frame translators’ gender performance
will be revealed first, by bringing together the fragments of the translators’ lin-
guistic performance that evokes gender. Then the ways how the discourses frame
translators’ gender performance will be discussed. The discourses that constitute the
differences between the translator’s gender performance will be dealt with first and
those that determine the similarities will follow.
5.3.1 Discourses Constitutive of Translators’ Different

Gender Performance
5.3.1.1 Tracing the Discourses
The results of textual and paratextual analysis in previous sections suggests the
existence of contradictory and competing discourses in Yang’s translation, a case of
interdiscursivity: one is the “women-identified” (Maier 1998) egalitarianism, the
other is traditional and patriarchal conservatism. The presence of the dual and
dueling gender discourses accounts for Yang’s unstable and confused manner of
gender construction. On the one hand, she is conscious in building positive images
for the women characters and highlighting the feminist aspects of the work as well
as the identity of the woman author. On the other hand, however, she is still
subjected to the effect of patriarchy upon the subliminal so as to take up the
discursive position offered and expected by the society which threatens to relegate
5.3 Discourse Constitutive of Translators’ Gender Performance 121
women into oblivion, particularly through the generic use of masculine nouns and
pronouns to refer to both women and men.
To begin with, Yang established her subject position as an aggressive
“women-identified” translator who challenges the status of the source text and
explores the parameters of permissible or socially sanctioned gender behaviors.
Yang’s translation exhibits heavier translator’s mediation and manipulation than
Goldblatt’s in both textual and paratexual dimensions. The manipulation in her
translation involves the following major points: (1) Systematic and considerable
deletion of stretches of text is implicated so that Yang’s translation accounts only
for about half of Goldblatt’s in length; (2) Major female characters are given
English names with positive connotations and more conspicuous place of intro-
duction in the list of characters; (3) Paratextual means such as footnotes, substantial
preface as well as afterwords supplement the text proper and betrays the presence of
the translator; and (4) Discourses that denigrate or evoke negative images of women
are modified to ameliorate the depiction of women in general or specific woman
characters. Through these dimensions, Yang’s subjectivity both as a literary
translator and as a woman is distinctively represented.
Despite the apparent radical rewriting in her translation that carries apparent
feminist appeal, Yang’s translation is not, however, a thoroughgoing interrogation
of patriarchal norms and expectations upon women. Her translation betrays limi-
tations in her gender consciousness, mainly in two aspects. First, in comparison
with Goldblatt’s translation, the modalities of “tentativeness” and “obligation” are
given more expression through the use of modals “could”, “should” and “must”,
thus are more prominent. As has been pointed out in Sect. 5.1.2.3, the contradiction
between the tone of uncertainty and personal authority reveals the conflict between
the identity of a self-established aggressive translator and that of a woman sus-
ceptible to traditional gender stereotype. Yang’s limited gender consciousness is
revealed more effectively in her translation strategy regarding the Chinese generic
nouns “人”, “人们” and “人类”: She uses the masculine forms “man” or “men” as
the equivalents to the Chinese words to refer to human beings in general or
mixed-sex groups of people. This is arguably a form of subconscious sexism.
In addition, there is one paradoxical point in Yang’s translation. Yang seems to
tend to affect the readers with more emotional force, since she has adopted the
amplifiers more frequently than Goldblatt. However, the comparison between the
two translations in terms of the functions of amplifiers and downtoners in modi-
fying emotional and unemotional expressions (in Sect. 5.1.4.3) has suggested that
Yang’s translation tends to reduce the degree of emotion while Goldblatt’s trans-
lation is inclined to tone it up. This rather paradoxical language use is another
manifestation of the competition of duel gender discourses which constitute the
conflicting gender subjectivity of Yang, indicating the struggle of the translator
against the stereotypical view of women’s linguistic performance and her effort in
exploring more options.
In general, the features of Goldblatt’s translation in different aspects suggest that
he takes up the subject position of a quasi-faithful male-perspective translator who
demonstrates his translator’s subjectivity in a restricted fashion, and who locates

himself mainly within a traditional patriarchal gender discourse.
The features for Goldblatt’s translation are also of contradiction, but a different
kind from Yang’s. Firstly, compared with Yang’s translation, Goldblatt’s transla-
tion demonstrates translator’s mediation and manipulation to far more limited
extent. Though it involves omission and the adoption of some paratextual means,
they are conducted in a random and limited way. The omission accounts for much
smaller proportion of text; the translator’s preface does not reveal his subjective
attitude or assessment either towards the work or the author; and the list of char-
acters follows the common practice of alphabetic order. When the above features
are considered together with the fact that Goldblatt’s translation is almost twice
longer than Yang’s, it would appear that his translation is much more faithful to the
source text than Yang’s. However, as already discussed in previous sections,
Goldblatt’s translation is less equivalent to the source text than Yang’s in terms of
the expression of modality and pragmatics. Therefore, Goldblatt’s translation
appears to show simultaneous fidelity and infidelity to the source text. To account
for the seemingly paradoxical situation, more fragments of his linguistic behaviors
are needed.
Other differences of Goldblatt’s translation from Yang’s translation can be
divided into two groups. On the one hand, Goldblatt’s translation demonstrates the
features of longer sentences, lower lexical density, more subordinate clauses built
on relative pronouns and adverbs, systematic translation of mostly two kinds of
Chinese sentence structure into the English neutral passive voice form, and the
adoption of more emphasizers and downtoners to communicate stronger
assertiveness of the truth value of the propositions and to balance conviction with
caution. On the other hand, his translation implicates less frequent adoption of
modal auxiliaries and less amplifiers, the latter being words of versatility and color
which function to hold the audience’s interest (Tagliamonte and Roberts 2005:
281). It is clear that features in the first group are concerned more or less with the
accurate conveyance of propositional, logical and textual information, whilst the
second group is relevant more to the expression of subjective evaluation, judgment
and emotion. What is suggested therefore is that Goldblatt’s translation seems to lay
more stress on ideational and textual meaning than on interpersonal meaning. The
indication comes in perfect agreement with the apparent paradox revealed above:
Goldblatt is faithful to the source text from the perspective of ideational and textual
information, yet betrays some degree of infidelity in terms of interpersonal
meaning.
Such quasi-faithful representation is just reflective of the masculine-aesthetics-
defined criteria for excellence in literature, which is “emotionally distant, techni-
cally sophisticated and factually informative” (Taylor, quoted in Cochrane 2013).
The effect of more distance in emotion is achieved through more restricted adoption
of such interpersonal means as modal auxiliaries expressing modalities and less
amplifiers to impact on the readers with less strong bursts of emotion. Meanwhile,
his translation is more factually informative as he is much more faithful than Yang
in ideational and textual aspects.
In addition, there are other representations of Goldblatt’s conservative and

male-centered performance of gender. First, from the perspective of modality, the
translation demonstrates more stress over “ability” than “tentativeness” or “obli-
gation”, suggesting the exudation of and warrant for masculine power, and the
reluctance to appear negotiable, uncertain and obedient. Then, regarding the
depiction of the male and female characters in the novel, as it was clearly
demonstrated by examples from Sect. 5.2.2, Goldblatt’s assessment of female
characters is fairly traditional and patriarchal whereas he takes a defending stand
towards the failings of character in males.
One more point regarding the use of the amplifiers and downtoners to regulate
the degree of emotional expressions calls for attention. As already discussed in the
above, Yang shows some degree of schism in subjectivity in this respect, which
may be the result of her, struggle against social stereotyping. Goldblatt’s linguistic
performance in this aspect exhibits similar paradox as he adopts larger proportions
of amplifiers and smaller percentage of downtoners to modify emotional words,
which amounts to intensifying the degree of emotion, a tendency which is believed
to be more likely to be witnessed in women’s language use than in men’s in second
wave feminist gender and language studies. To claim based on the point that he is
identified to some extent with female subjectivity would be too rash and mis-
leading. As shall be argued in the following, such linguistic choice is most likely to
be evidential of his stereotypical view upon women’s language use and thus con-
sistent with the dominant patriarchal discourse that produces his translation.
5.3.1.2 Workings of the Discourses
The translation activities as well as the translated texts for the study are part of a
social process, the struggle between men and women. The translations are both
determined by and as part of such a process. Despite the contrastive gender per-
formance of the translators, the existent discourses of feminism versus patriarchy,
equally available to both translators, offer the translators alternative way to establish
their subject position, one that is conscious of women and the emancipation of
women from men’s oppression and the other one that seeks to reaffirm men’s
dominance and control of women.
The form the struggle between men and women takes is waves of women’s
movement, and the production and publication of the two translations fell on what
is termed the Second Wave. Starting from the presupposition that gender difference
and inequality is socially constructed, Second Wave feminists chiefly tried to
combat the ideologically positioning of women and address the ways in which
women have historically been marginalized or silenced both culturally and socially.
One important battle field was in language, as they intensely felt that linguistic
sexism was a critical dimension where the oppression and denigration of women
was built into the subconscious of people in an insidious fashion in considerable
occasions. In the field of literature, as one chief form of language, the questioning of
the feminine identity takes the form of, among others, feminist experimental
writing, which highlights women’s experience and female body especially through
ingenious linguistic creativity. As a direct response to the radical literary practices,
feminist translators performed linguistic innovation to translate those feminist
experimental writings, and queried source texts from a feminist perspective to
intervene and make changes to them.
The discourse of feminist egalitarianism constructed in Yang’s translation rep-
resents the influence of the women’s movement, crucially mediated through the
gender orientation of the publishing company for Yang’s translation, namely, the
feminist Virago Press. Established in 1973 in the heyday of the Second Wave
Women’s Movement by a feminist, Carmen Callil, and aimed to give a voice to
many excellent yet neglected women writers, Virago Press constitutes the effort of
an institution for the feminist cause by actively engaged in publishing literary works
written by women. As its logo claims, Virago is an “international publisher of
books by women”. The name instantly signals its attitude: Virago means heroic
war-like woman. The publishing house set its key aims as, which are avowed in
“About Virago” on its official website,7 “to put women centre stage; to explore the
untold stories of their lives and histories; to break the silence around many women’s
experiences; to publish breathtaking new fiction alongside a rich list of rediscovered
classics; and above all to champion women’s talent”. Since its establishment in
early 1970s, Virago has been successful in promoting the work of women who
might otherwise be ignored, and challenged the masculine aesthetics-defined lit-
erary world.
It is thus not surprising that Virago should incorporate into its envisage of a
feminist program the translation of Chenzhong De Chibang, a work written by a
third-world woman author and translated by a British woman translator who spent
much of her life in the third world country. It is also thus not random that the
translation ameliorates the representation of the women characters, emphasizes the
feminist elements of the source text both in the preface and the afterwords and
adopts strategies to highlight the translator’s own identities. The novel and the
translation are both in agreement with the publisher’s aims. The novel, although not
regarded a feminist work, suggests feminist ideas in two aspects. On the one hand,
it depicts women characters who are professionals, equal players to men in the
male-dominated world and thus against the traditional image of obedient women.
On the other, it takes the development of heavy industry as the main theme. This is,
as noted by Davin (1987: 175) in the afterwords, “a statement in itself as it is not a
usual subject for a woman writer to tackle”. An interrogation from a female point of
view of both the failings of character in men and women, the novel is beyond doubt
a representation of a woman’s talent. Then, the form the translation takes, especially
the modification to the depiction of women characters and the adoption of the
strategies of prefacing and footnoting, is suggestive of second wave feminist
translation practice (cf. von Flotow 1991: 72–78). These strategies demonsrate the
7
The web page is accessed through http://www.virago.co.uk/about/.
translator’s voice, her creativity and challenge to the source text and the author, thus
breaking the silence around the translator and showcasing her talent.
The existent discourse of feminism available to Yang offers her an alternative
way to establish her subject position through the crucial channel of Virago, one that
appeals for the emancipation of women from men’s oppression. However, despite
the equal availability of the feminist discourse to Goldblatt during the period of his
translation, he did not opt for it. His decision, conscious or subconscious, consti-
tutes a conservatively patriarchal subjectivity, reinforcing the discourse feminism
tries to fight.
The fact that the different gender subject positions adopted by the two translators
are constructed from the same resources is critically reflective of the meaning of
feminist struggle. As has already been discussed in chapter three (Sect. 3.1.1),
different discourses within the same language construe the world and give it
meaning in distinct ways which share no universal concepts reflecting a fixed
reality. Thus language becomes the site where struggles occur over possible forms
of subjectivity. The plurality of meaning is what sets the foundation upon which
feminists fight for their subjectivity. Discourse of egalitarianism can therefore be
constructed in spite of the prevalent discourse of patriarchy. The historically
specific factor of the existence of feminist discourse against patriarchy opens up the
options of a women-identified subject position for the translators. The two trans-
lations contrastive in terms of gender performance consequently represent the
ongoing power struggle between women and men and suggests the prevalence of
patriarchal discourse over the discourse of emancipation and equality.
The selection of Chenzhong De Chibang for translation and the nearly total
absence of conscious feminist concern in Goldblatt’s translation underline the social
import and the limited social impact of the feminist discourse. The fictional work of
Chenzhong De Chibang, as is already pointed out previously, is of feminist values,
and the representation of the author’s concept of feminism in the work is highly
likely to be also acknowledged by the translator. The translator’s acknowledgement
of the feminist appeals in the source text can be inferred from the review of the
translation. Published in Los Angeles Times in the same year as the publication of
the translation,8 the review acknowledges the “lively feminism” represented in the
novel (translation), though it is defined as only “touches of” and “awkward” (Eder
1989). However, the concern for feminism is so restricted that even in the review it
is only mentioned by passing because it is not why the novel is translated in the first
place. The review implies that why the novel was translated into the target culture
(the US society) is out of political concerns. While the novel was labeled “Socialist
Realist Dissent”, it was considered as reflecting the social and political situation of
China immediately before Tiananmen Square incident, the incorporation of which
incident into the review necessarily foregrounded politics. The rather informative
8
The review was titled “Chinese Lessons: HEAVY WINGS by Zhang Jie translated from the
Chinese by Howard Goldblatt” published on December 10, 1989, by Richard Eder. It was retrieved
from http://articles.latimes.com/1989-12-10/books/bk-426_1_reformers on 20 Dec, 2014.
opening sentence of the review indicates the political purpose of the translation in
the US: “Last spring, when the English translation of Zhang Jie’s 1985 novel,
‘Heavy Wings’, was being prepared, its publishers may have wondered whether the
dizzying pace of transformation in China would seriously date it.” It suggests that
the novel was taken somewhat as real reflection of ongoing event rather than a work
of art larger than life, and thus of political informative import. Then, the reviewer
did not allow much space for the comments on the language or literary skills (which
were covered in merely four sentences) which are usually what to be expected in a
review of a literary work. His focus was rather on the discussion of the plot and
characters against the political status quo of China as if they are real. Here and
there, the reviewer mixed background information with fictional plot and charac-
ters, merging the border between the real with the artificial, giving the sense that
what the novel tells was what was really happening in China, the continual of past
conflicts in history.
Such positioning of the novel when international political struggle is weighed
overwhelmingly over feminism, as illustrated and reflected by the review, neces-
sarily influenced the general strategy for translation. In Goldblatt’s translation, the
feminist concern is obscured and reduced to the extent of near oblivion so that the
political theme would appear more prominent; on the other, his translation is more
faithful to the source text in the informative and textual than in the subjective
emotional aspects, perhaps in the hopes of providing more information for political
purposes. The sacrifice of feminism is of course part of the translator’s performance
of gender identity because in so doing he established himself as conservative. It also
suggests the subordinate, or peripheral, status of feminism as a social movement at
least in the 1980s American society. Despite the efforts of generations of feminists
in making intervention in every social aspect, feminism has not yet achieved the
success it aimed for.
The limited success of feminism in altering society’s stereotypical view upon
women, or more specifically, women’s language use, is also evident in a seemingly
paradoxical performance of Goldblatt. As pointed out in the previous section,
Goldblatt applied larger percentage of amplifiers and smaller percentage of
downtoners to modifying emotional expressions than Yang did. The effect is the
general intensification of emotion, a tendency which is believed to be more likely to
witness in female language use in most second wave gender and language research.
This seems to suggest that Goldblatt somewhat demonstrated a degree of femi-
ninity, contradictive to a typical masculine image thus rendering his subjectivity
unstable. To claim, based on the evidence, that Goldblatt was women-identified,
even though only to a rather limited extent, would be misleading, because there
could be other, more plausible motivation. Since access to querying the translator in
person was not gained, the study can only offer hypothetical assumption based on
the information available.
First, the source text confronted him is authored by a woman writer, and he has
to, as a conscientious translator, inevitably deal with some of the so-called features
of women’s language, which constitutes part of the author’s literary style. To
reconstruct the imprints which define that it is a woman’s literary work in the target
text, the translator may adopt features of women’s language in English which,
depending on his translation strategies, may or may not be equivalent to the
expressions in the source text. The next step is to decide which feature(s) to rep-
resent the feminine identity constructed in the source text. The chief resource that
he can resort to is, necessarily, himself and his own judgment, or to be specific, his
judgment upon what can be the distinctive features of the linguistic style of the
source text. Since the translator takes a typical male point of view, as eloquently
demonstrated by the analysis in previous sections, it is reasonable to believe that
upon this issue, his male stereotype towards women’s linguistic behavior is again
evoked and prevails. There is no direct access to knowing the nature of the
translator’s stereotype. However, there are other resources, sociocultural, that are
likely to implicate the translator in an indirectly way so as to indicate the transla-
tor’s possible gender consciousness. One of them is studies carried out within the
field of sociolinguistic research. Since the early twentieth century and way into the
heyday of the Second Wave feminism, from the early research of Otto Jesperson
(1922) to the influential work of Robin Lakoff (1975), the claim that women’s
language is characteristic of deficiency was a dominant view (Talbot 1998: 36,
131). According to the deficit framework, one typical feature found in the language
used by women is the use of intensification means to boost emotion (Jesperson
1922, Lakoff 1975). Thus the frequent use of the intensifying adverbs such as so,
too, very, pretty, extremely etc. is usually associated with women and viewed as
representation of femininity. As a retrospective view from latter scholars doing
research in the field of gender and language studies, especially those who take a
post-structuralist discourse perspective, the earlier research is regarded as just
reflective of the workings of patriarchy, an act of doing gender, recreating and
reaffirming the hierarchical relation between men and women (Cameron 1997,
Talbot 1998, Sunderland 2006). Such academic research is the representation of the
internalized gender stereotypes, which constitutes the wide social context within
which the translation occurs. Therefore, there is every reason to suggest that the
translator’s view, contingent upon the social context, is likely to be the same as
what the social makes accessible to its members. The translator may thus con-
sciously choose what are generally regarded as feminine linguistic features to dye
the translation with a touch of femininity so as to achieve a degree of equivalence to
the source text in style.
The case clearly indicates that there is no absolute correspondence between
linguistic performance and gendered subject position. Despite that the translator
performs gender linguistically in way of tipping towards the feminine gender, the
apparent linguistic gender identity achieved is not what the language may index.
No matter what, since the dawning of the feminist discourse, it becomes possible
to challenge the traditional idea of translator’s invisibility and to champion
women’s talent in a dynamic way. Meanwhile, because of the power struggle
between men and women in wider social context, translation becomes the site for
the struggle over control between counter and conflicting discourses.
5.3.2 Discourse Constitutive of Translators’ Similar Gender

Performance
Before discussing the workings of the discourse which constitutes the similar
gender performance of the translators through language, remarks are in order here
on why the issue of similarities is brought in when differences seem to be the track
to follow because it seems natural and necessary that men and women should speak
and write (and perhaps translate) differently.
First, as has been pointed out in the opening chapter, the gender differences
paradigm has been problematized because it entails the reinforcement of stereotypes
and essentialism as a consequence of a preoccupation with the differences between
masculinity and femininity. However, esearch that turns to discourse analysis that
takes contextual factors into consideration have come to recognize the discursive,
textual nature of gender identities and acknowledge that either women or men
always adopt multiple subject positions which amount to fluctuating gender iden-
tities and that it is far too reductive to put men and women at the linguistic extremes
of their sex.
Second, in line with Baker (2014), researchers who adopt corpus method should
be aware of the danger of a “difference mindset”, “privileging findings that reveal
differences while backgrounding similarities” (Baker 2014: 24).
Another story about gender differences could be that males and females are more alike than
they are similar. Yet to people who are working within a ‘difference mindset’ such a story is
perhaps not as interesting, and could even constitute a ‘non-finding’ that is not worth
reporting. (ibid)
Quoting another study, he goes on to argue that “people tend to ignore infor-
mation that contradicts stereotypes, while having better memory access for infor-
mation that is consistent with the stereotype” (ibid). In other words, researchers are
likely to be primed to notice and report gender differences and over-focus on
differences while under-playing similarities. Therefore, Baker recommends that
corpus researchers who explore the interaction between gender and language should
always expect more than differences to await them (ibid: 43).
Last but not least, studies have found that when linguistic gender performance is
related to context, men and women who are placed in similar or the same situations,
such as at home or in workplace, tend to use language in similar way (Baker 2014,
Holmes 2005). Such finding may be blindingly obvious, yet it tends not to be part
of gender differences narratives.
This study makes a point of the similar linguistic behaviors of the translators in
translating as an effort to de-affirm the stereotype of men and women being different
in language use and to stress the importance of context in interpreting the gender
performance of specific individuals.
5.3.2.1 Tracing the Discourse
We see the two translations share several points of similarities, which result from a
discourse different from those which produce the differences.
Firstly, regarding the modals. The functions of the modals in both translations
yield largely convergent profiles, mainly (1) the same modalities expressed by
them, (2) similar most favored subject options for the sentences containing the
modals and (3) the users being invariably dominated by male characters. In addi-
tion, the modals are rendered from the same sources, which means the same
translation techniques are adopted by both translators.
Secondly, with regard to the representation of transitivity. The English
THERE + BE structure and the passive form BE + V-en in both translations are
translated from mostly the same Chinese sentence structures or expressions and
they share the same top three most frequent correspondence.
Thirdly, the performance of the pragmatic means of emphasizers, amplifiers and
downtoners in both translations displays similarities in three aspects. In the first
place, the two translators have both used various emphasizers, amplifiers and
downtoners to modify emotional as well as unemotional words and used these
means to modify unemotional words more often than emotional words. Then,
translation shift, which takes the form of pragmatic force/degree gap between the
source text and the target text, occurs in both translations. Finally, in both trans-
lations the same emphasizers, amplifiers and downtoners occur most frequently.
Finally, both translators have made bold deletion to the same chapter of the novel.
It is argued that the discourse that frame the similarities between the translators’
linguistic gender performance is the institutional discourse of translation. It seems to be
redundant to suggest that the institution of translation will constitute translator’s
translational activities. However, it is not. The presupposition of deeming it redundant is
that gender is considered as built into the social identity of being a translator and
activated the time when the latter is brought into relevance. However, the truth is
arguably that the social identity of translator interacts with gender and shoots it through
in the same fashion as other social categories such as the institutional status of man-
agers, university professors and so on would do. That means translation, or rather the
institution of translation, is another scope for gender struggle in a similar way to scopes
such as corporate or university classrooms. It is a variable, contextual, social and/or
cultural, which exerts its specific influence upon the construction of gender identities.
5.3.2.2 Workings of the Discourse
The translation institution9 consists of the professionals, translators being part of

them, and the dominant translation poetics which include the range of possible and
9
The definition is adopted from Lefevere (1992/2010) with modification. In Translation, Rewriting
and the Manipulation of Literary Fame, Lefevere developed his idea of the factors that
permissible translation techniques and strategies and the role of translation in the
wide social system in which it exists. Diachronically, the institution would change
and evolve with the development of society and the transformation of cultural and
economic elements so that, for instance, the translation institution in contemporary
China is apparently quite different from that in the age when the emperor-patroned
translation of Sanskrit was organized in Jin and Sui Dynasties.10 Synchronically,
since the system of translation is one component entangled in an intricate web of the
literary polysystem, it stands in constant interaction with other forms of literary
systems, restrained by and restraining them. Despite the vigorous demolition of the
myth of translator’s “invisibility” since the late 1970s with the dawn and devel-
opment of Descriptive Translation Studies and that translation has already been
acknowledged as a kind of “manipulation” and “rewriting” that will unavoidably be
loaded with the “voice” or “thumbprint” of the translators because of ideological
factors, it is, nevertheless, primarily a restrained linguistic transfer based on a
source text. No matter what kind of translation strategies and techniques are
allowed in whatever period based on whatever theories, the basic concept of
translation as mediated meaning transfer across languages to facilitate human
communication maintains, and the translators will always be subject to, maybe to
various extent, the information in the source text and the language pair involved in
the translation. It is analogous to, say, in a corporate, where there are unwritten yet
ever-effective work ethics and codes of conduct that will indiscriminately constrain
and be expected from the individuals in a particular functional position within the
corporate. Therefore, for the persons holding a powerful position, such as a man-
ager or a CEO, be they male or female, they are expected to do power explicitly
using (linguistic) strategies that are deemed to be appropriate to the title they hold.
In this case, women are likely to disregard conventionally polite ways of expressing
disagreement, but rather to adopt stereotypically masculine strategies (Holmes
2005: 51). In translation, because of the restraints and expectations on male and
female translators equally, they are likely to demonstrate similar or even the same
linguistic behaviors that index gender similarities instead of differences.
The immediate situation for the translation of the Chinese literary work
Chenzhong De Chibang is concerned with the transfer of the story and the char-
acterization across the borders between Chinese and English.
The main storyline is about the confrontation between a group of reformers who
are determined to modernize Chinese heavy industry and an opposing camp of
conservative officials who do not want changes. The novel also describes the family
life of several married couples, in complementation to and subordination of the
main storyline of the struggle around the reform. The main theme of the
systematically govern the reception or rejection of a literary text, taking literary translation as the
central concern. According to him, the professionals within the literary system, the patronage
outside the literary system and the dominant poetics are the three main factors which function to
control translation in a given literary system.
10
The Dynasties of Jin (265–420 AD) and Sui (581–618 AD) in Chinese history witnessed the
climax of Sanskrit translation.
development of China’s heavy industry determines that the protagonists are mostly
male while women characters play mainly subordinate roles. Consequently, male
characters are involved in the chief part of plot and given more space of depiction,
overshadowing the women characters.
The features of the story is determinative of several aspects of similarity between
the two translations. The first aspect is the subject and user profiles of the modal
auxiliaries where male characters are the dominant option for both. Since the
resources available, the plot and the characterization in the source text, are the same
for both translators, the profiles, as constitutive of the representation of the
resources in the target texts, could be nothing but similar, if the plot is to be kept
unchanged (neither translator did for the most part). Second, as for the drastic/
complete deletion of chapter ten in both translations, it is likely that both translators
take into consideration the same factor, i.e. the rather technical argument related to
industrial management in the speech is hardly conducive to the development of the
storyline. Therefore, in both translations the speech is made sacrifice to the story.
Third, since the story centers on the reform in heavy industry rather than the
emotional and family life of characters, direct description of human emotion is far
less than the narration of actions, the dialogues involving discussions about the
development of heavy industry and narrator’s comments directly related to the
thematic matter. This is likely to be the reason why in both translations, pragmatic
means are mostly applied to unemotional expressions than emotional ones.
Meanwhile, the language pair involved in the translation also affect the forms the
target texts take. Both translators are native English speakers, and Chinese is a
foreign language for them both. Since language is the symbolic construal upon
which conceptual meanings depend, it is thus reasonable to argue that the trans-
lators’ ways of thinking and of perceiving the world and consequently their cog-
nitive behaviors towards a common foreign language are generally similar to each
other’s. These shared ways of experience and cognition, built on a common mother
tongue, will necessarily be reflected in the conversion from Chinese into English,
resulting in similar or the same usage of certain linguistic features in the target texts.
To be specific, this could be the cause for the same or similar translation techniques
adopted by both translators for the application of the English modals, the
THERE + BE structure and the neutral passive form as correspondence to the same
or similar Chinese expressions and structures. They are the reflection for the same
or similar cognitive and linguistic processes in the mind of the translators.
Moreover, the general trend in terms of the usage of the contemporary English
language is also reflected in the translation in way of the application of the prag-
matic means. As it has been found that in both translations, the emphasizers,
amplifiers and downtoners the most frequently used are exactly the same ones. The
high frequency of these words is in agreement with findings from other studies on
English amplifiers and intensifiers (Ito and Tagliamonte 2003, Tagliamonte and
Roberts 2005, Xiao and Tao 2007). Ito and Tagliamonte (2003: 266) find that in
contemporary British English, very, really, so and too are among the most frequent
intensifiers. Tagliamonte and Roberts’ (2005: 287) study of American English
reveals that the same intensifiers occur most frequently. Since these studies
investigate only part of the emphasizers and intersifiers applied in the translations
and take no downtoners into consideration, all the emphasizers, amplifiers and
downtoners that appear in the translations are searched in BNC. The results exhibit
almost the same rate of intensification. Really, just, so, very, too, only and enough
all vie for the leading frequency positions compared with other words applied in the
translations. The compatibility of the linguistic performance of the translators with
the general trend of the English language, at least in the aspect of pragmatics,
suggests that they are subject to the language into which they were born and within
which they grew and learned to perceive the world and express themselves.
In sum, the similarities between the translations demonstrate and examplify the
interplay between individuals’ gender construction through language and their other
social identities. One substantial reason for the problematization by feminists since
the late 1980s of the way in which gender was spoken of in totalizing terms is that
they have come to realize that “gender as a category intersects with, and is shot
through by, other categories of social identity such as sexuality, ethnicity, social
position and geography” (Lazar 2005: 1). This means that gender cannot be viewed
as isolated from other social identities of an individual. On the one hand, the
performance of gender entails the simultaneous construction of other identities such
as age, nationality and social and institutional status or vice versa. On the other, the
construction of gender identity is influenced, in one way or another to varied
degrees, by the other identities of an individual.
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Chapter 6
Conclusion
6.1 Major Findings
This study focused on the ideological variable of gender in literary translation and
made a case study of the English translations of a Chinese novel in order to
investigate the ways possibly allowed to the translators to construct their gender
identitiesthrough translation and to interpret the power and control which constrains
the construction from a perspective informed by post-structuralism and CDA.
The study has answered the research questions put forward in the introductory
chapter in the following ways.
(1) How do woman and man translator construct their gender identities through
language in translation?
To answer the question, several aspects of language use by both translators are
investigated, which include corpus statistics, modality, transitivity, pragmatic
features and the conscious mediation of the translators. The results demonstrate
that the male and female translators construct their gender identities in different
ways with language in these aspects, though they also conduct the same or
similar gendered linguistic performance in more significant ways. The female
translator manipulates the text much more aggressively and is apparently
women-identified in that she systematically deletes considerable stretches of
text, promotes women characters to more conspicuous places and makes her
presence felt by prefacing and footnoting. The male translator, on the other
hand, is more faithful to the source text in ideational and textual aspects but less
so in interpersonal aspect, and barely makes himself visible.
Despite the differences, their language use shares similarities in terms of several
aspects concerning the application of modality, transitivity and pragmatics
means. These points of convergence represent the shared aspects in their gender
identities.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3720-8_6
136 6 Conclusion
(2) How do they represent gender constructed in the source text in translation?
The ways the two translators represent the gender constructed in the source text
are distinctive. The female translator rewrites the discourses of a damaging kind
to women. However, she has not completely warded off the patriarchal influence
as she betrays unconscious sexism with the generic use of masculine nouns and
pronouns to translate the Chinese collective noun “人”. The male translator takes
a largely traditional male perspective towards women and holds them in bias.
(3) How does the identity of translator interact with gender identity? That is, to
what extent the constraints that translation is subjected to and the issues of
fidelity and invisibility may intervene in the construction and representation of
gender in the target text?
Gender identity interacts with the social identity of translator as the institution
of translation imposes constraints upon the translators in the forms of fidelity
and the requirement of translator’s invisibility so that the linguistic resources
available to the translators and the possible scope within which they are
allowed to apply the resources are limited. The limitations upon the linguistic
performance of the translators are most likely to result in similarities rather than
differences.
(4) How can the gender construction and representation in the translations by
opposite sex translators be comprehended in a post-structuralist discursive
sense? In other words, what are the discourses that shape the way gender is
represented and constructed in the literary translations by opposite sex
translators?
The differences are argued to be the effects of the feminist discourse against
patriarchy which open up more options for the translators to perform their
gender identities. The similarities, on the other hand, are produced by the
discursive restraints from the translation institution proper, a just response to
question three.
In a word, despite the fact that man and woman involved in a particular com-
municative action such as translation may demonstrate distinctive ways of linguistic
behaviors which represent different gender identity, occasions when the border
dissolves occur so as to indicate the absence of a fixed core and the fluctuating
nature of subjectivity of an individual, as can be illustrated by the performance of
the female and male translators of Chenzhong De Chibang. The fluidity of sub-
jectivity is the result of the agency of the subject who is given access to and allowed
to make resistance to particular subjectivity and produce new versions of meaning
from the conflicts and contradictions between existing discourses.
6.2 Implications
As demonstrated by the study, women-identified translators are likely to seek to

deconstruct and subvert the conventional image of femininity with aggressive
translation strategies such as considerable rewriting of gender biased discourse and
6.2 Implications 137
paratextual interference. This is to a large extent in line with the conduct of

translators of the second wave where feminist translation is defined as characteristic
of the defiance of the source text, the adoption of ingenious translation strategies
(von Flotow 1991) and the assertion of essential difference from translations by
males. On the other hand, however, the study also suggests that the shared situa-
tional factors constitute the immediate context which can evoke the production of
the same/similar linguistic behaviors on the part of male and female translators.
The construction of gender upon shared ground is likely to be largely uncon-
scious, fulfilled as part of the immediate task of transferring the meaning of a
specific text into a world of different language. In the situational process, the
immediate power relations involved in the translation trigger and are triggered by
the negotiations between the target text and the source text, between the target
language and the source language and between the translator’s subjectivity and the
language by which such subjectivity is constructed. Ideally, the target text is sup-
posed to be a perfect mirror image of the source text, yet actually, because of a
conjuncture of factors, including the different subjectivity of the translator from the
author’s, the different symbolic systems with which meanings are expressed and the
distinct cultural contexts, the image is never perfect and frequently far from perfect.
Therefore, tension is always generated when the requirement to make the target text
equivalent to the source is clashed with the reality of the existence of the distinct
subjectivity of another individual, the different construal of the world through
another meaning-making system and a different set of beliefs, traditions and
political appeals other than what are entailed in the source text. Moreover, the
tension is compounded by the impossibility of fixing a universal structure of sub-
jectivity on the part of the translator. S/he has to select and negotiate a discursive
position from the forms of subjectivity open to her/him every time s/he is engaged
with the symbolic system. In principle, the tension could be resolved by the denial
of either party involved in the confrontation. In reality, however, such resolution
can never be implemented because of the control from the society at large.
The larger context that imposes upon the translation in the specific case of this
study is the confrontation between the feminist discourse and patriarchy. Because of
the confrontation, it is possible to construct contrastive gender identities from the
same resources.
The fact that the different gender subject positions adopted by the two translators
are constructed from the same resources is critically reflective of the meaning of
feminist struggle. However, lamentably, the movement has not yet been completely
successful, not only because its effect upon large groups of men in the society
nearly amounts to null, but also because it has neither reached all groups of women
nor raised the awareness of women in all substantial aspects at crucial occasions.
Despite the efforts of generations of feminists in making intervention in every social
aspect, language being a significant one, feminism as a political movement directed
as changing the power relations between men and women, and further the structure
of society, has not yet achieved the success as it aims for. On the one hand, men still
largely subscribe to the standards and codes of conduct informed by patriarchy,
either resistant to change or complying grudgingly without understanding (Talbot
138 6 Conclusion
1998: 225). On the other hand, willing women may not be aware of the subcon-
scious congealing in their psyche of an imbalanced power relation. The parallel
existence of the dual discourses of feminism and patriarchy in the same translation
of Yang’s and the typical male gaze through which Goldblatt’s translation is formed
are undoubted evident of the situation. They represent the partial achievement of the
feminist struggle against a patriarchal society; meanwhile, they are also part of the
then ongoing struggle which is still on now.
The constraints of other identities, such as being a translator, upon gender
performance of an individual are reflective of the increasingly larger, layer upon
layer of, contexts outside them in which the individual is involved, most often in the
form of power struggles. We see from the case study that an individual performing
his/her gender identity is limited to the discourses available to him/her in a par-
ticular institution at a specific period in time. The moving from the more immediate
layer of context to the more remote ones, the effect of which does not at all decrease
in the course, means the increase of the limiting effect and the compounding
conditions and thus the narrowing down of the discursive options. The represen-
tation of the gender identity, in the form of foregrounding one gender or the other in
traditional way or creatively, is the result of negotiation between the parties
involved in power struggles. The power struggles limit as well as open up the
possible discourses within which possible gender subjectivity can be constructed.
The institutional and social identities of an individual are subject to the ideologies
of the institution and the society. They can, therefore, exert ideological influence
upon the construction of gender identity.
In such a long-established and ideology-ridden institution as translation, the
linguistic performance of gender can be more constrained than, say, that involved in
the daily communications in domestic or workplace contexts because within these
latter contexts, the construction of gender identity is conditioned more to the
immediate situational factors than to the ever present institutional constraints. The
nature of translation determines that no matter how open the access is to discourses
other than the sanctioned and more conventional ones, the individuals conducting
the translation are shackled with double symbolic systems and the possible subject
positions allowed within and by them. Thus, within the institute of translation, the
relationship between gender and language is intersected with the third factor of
translation, complicating the picture to still larger extent. The ideological nature of
translation is represented both in its restraining effect upon the linguistic gender
performance of the translators and in its function of being a vehicle in reaffirming or
resisting the undesirable gender relationship within patriarchy.
6.3 Limitations and Suggestions for Future Studies
The study suffers limitations in two aspects. First, because of the lack of access to
interviews with the translators and publishers, the research did not incorporate
first-hand information on the possible conscious positioning of the source and target
6.3 Limitations and Suggestions for Future Studies 139
texts in terms of gender and the motivation for the positioning. Instead, only
inferences are made based on accessible resources, albeit indirect and deductive.
Then, the fact that the case study involves only the translations of a single source
text denies the generalization of part of the conclusions to other translations by the
same translators or to other translators or to other communicative circumstances
that the translators are engaged in.
To address the limitations and explore other possible ways of gender con-
struction in translation and other manners of interaction between gender and
translation, future research may be conducted along four dimensions of comparative
studies. Firstly, other translations by the two translators, Yang and Goldblatt, can be
compared with the translations adopted in this study to see whether the ways they
perform gender in other translated texts is the same. Since different translations
entail different processes in which the gender discourses are involved, the trans-
lators may be differently subject positioned or they may consciously adopt different
subject positions. Secondly, comparisons can be made between the translations of
works by different sex authors to see whether the translator’s ways of constructing
her/his own gender identity remain unaffected by different authors’ gender per-
formance. Thirdly, comparison can be made between the translations and the
non-translated texts by each translator respectively, who are also social individuals
involved in other social activities, so as to investigate whether the way the trans-
lators contest or confirm their social gender identity changes when the text type and
the locality of the communicative activity change. Finally, the translation activity
and the translations of groups of female and male translators who are engaged in
similar translation context or who enjoy similar institutional and social status can be
compared with those of the two translators to see if the gender performance of the
two translators represents group practice or distinguishes itself.
In addition, future research could be carried out to make further exploration of
the extent to which the variability of female and male translators’ faithfulness in
terms of the transfer of ideational, textual and interpersonal information in trans-
lation. This study suggests that male translator could be more faithful to the source
text in terms of ideational and textual meaning, whereas the female translator may
demonstrate higher degree of fidelity in rendering the interpersonal meaning. Future
research could be conducted upon larger database, either to test the hypothesis on
other translations by the same translators or on other translators.
References

von Flotow, L. 1991. Feminist Translation: Contexts, Practices, Theories. TTR 2: 69–84.
Appendix
I. Illustrations for Each Model Meaning Expressed Through

the Models in Yang’s Translation. ST Stands for Source Text; TT
for Target Text
Would
• Tentativeness/politeness
TT: Grace assumed the look of a judge passing sentence. ‘Very well then, Director
Feng would like to see you.’
• Hypothetical meaning
TT: If they had stayed as they were at the time of the flood, life would have been
much simpler.
• Past tense
TT: Whenever Autumn called on Professor Mo, she would tease the child by calling
him Oliver.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3720-8
142 Appendix
Could
• Tentativeness/politeness
TT: And of course she could always read.
• Hypothetical meaning
TT: …it wouldn’t do to wear her hair in tight curls like a girl. That looked vulgar,
cheap, as if you could only afford a perm once a year.
• Past tense
TT: There were others even worse off, and they could just make ends meet, but Jade
had her work cut to manage.
Should
• Tentative inference
TT: Ho Jiabing should be easy to cope with.
• Obligation
TT: Their management needs looking into. Why should we copy it blindly?
Must
• Logic necessity
TT: This block of flats must have dated from the early fifties, when rooms had
higher ceilings.
Appendix 143
• Compulsion/obligation
TT: He must butter him up.
Can
• Ability
TT: ‘Any of our stylists can give you a good perm,’ Little Gu put in.
• Possibility
TT: You can’t go on making that comparison forever. How can you compare the
old days with socialism?
• Permission
TT: He said, “In China you can only write up dead people, not living ones.”
Might
• Tentative possibility
TT: They might have a cruel stepmother.
Ought to
• Tentative inference
TT: He ought to know what’s on our minds, and see our good points too.
• Obligation
TT: You ought to educate yourself.

144 Appendix
Will
• Volition
TT: The ministry certainly will delegate all the authority it can to you.
• Prediction
TT: Just wait and see. Some day Daqing will be outclassed, because life moves
forward, grows richer…
May
• Possibility
TT: I’m afraid the strain may be too much for his heart.
Shall
• Prediction
TT: We shall need a liaison office.
II. Illustrations for Each Source of the Modal Auxiliaries Applied

in Yang’s Translation with Notes as Explanation. ST Stands
for Source Text; TT for Target Text
Would
• Direct translation
TT: Whenever Autumn called on Professor Mo, she would tease the child by calling
him Oliver.
Notes: “Would” is correspondent to , both of which express the modality of
certainty about the high frequency of occurrence of events in the past.
Appendix 145
• Translation shift type A
TT: Shi Quanqing was only too glad of chances like this, and would
self-righteously claim that building this plant would be helping to modernize
agriculture.
Notes: The first “would” in the translation is used as correspondence to .
However, the Chinese word expresses the modality of possibility of ability rather
than any of the modalities of would.
• Inferred translation
TT: If word of this got out, it would reflect badly on Feng.

Notes: The hypothetical meaning expressed through “would”, together with “if” is
inferred from the source sentence. In the form of Free Indirect Thought, it is the
assumption of the possibility of future event by one character.
• Translation shift type B
TT: He admired the new manager and would abide by his rules.
Notes: While the translation expresses the modality of volition, what can be inferred
from the source sentence is the modality of obligation.
• No correspondence
TT: Then what would he have done? He is a bastard.
Notes: The absence of correspondence is the result of liberal translation.
Could
146 Appendix
TT: She felt as if she had recovered the appetite she once had as a student, when she
could wolf down five ounces of rice at one meal.
Notes: “Could” corresponds to .
TT: The power people could get anything they wanted in their areas.
Notes: The source sentence expresses the affirmation towards the ability of a
specific group of people in the form of a rhetorical question.
TT: She could not bring herself to throw away those old letters.
Notes: The modality that can be inferred from the source sentence is volition,
unwillingness to commit certain deed. It is obviously not within the modal scope of
“could”.
TT: He disliked recalling it, yet could never free himself from it.
Notes: The adoption of “could” is the result of liberal translation.
Should
TT: Feng had got Grace to settle that by explaining that these gifts were an
expression of thanks and should of course be shared by everyone.
Notes: “Should” is used as correspondent to , both of which express the
modality of obligation.

Appendix 147
TT: But why should anyone so smart support a pedant like Zheng?
Notes: The Chinese word indicates the modality of possibility. However,

“should” carries the modality of obligation.
TT: As dialectical materialists, we should acknowledge young people’s right to

change some of the things we approve of.
Notes: The source sentence, in the form of rhetorical question, expresses the
modality of obligation through the syntax rather than any specific lexical items. The
translation makes an alteration to the sentence structure so as to explicitate the
modality with the modal “should”.
TT: Communists should impel society forward.
Notes: “Should” expresses the modality of tentative inference. However, the

inferred the modality of the source sentence is certainty, an extreme of possibility.
TT: There’s a big disagreement on how the economy should be developed.
Notes: The modality of obligation expressed by “should” is not correspondent to

any explicit or implicit modality in the source sentence as there involves no
modality in the source.
Must
TT: Something must have been knocked over.
Notes: The correspondence between and “must” is direct as both express

the modality of logic necessity.
148 Appendix
TT: What a different life that last customer must have.
Notes: The Chinese word expresses the modality of possibility or tentative

inference. However, the translation carries the modality of logic necessity by
“must”.
TT: ‘Just goes to show!’ boomed Wang. ‘If even Bamboo’s worried about the
quality of our products, the problem must be serious.’
Notes: The logic necessity is indicated in the source sentence but must be resorted
to the readers’ logic judgment to get across. The translation makes the implied
meaning explicit through the combination of “if” and “must”.
TT: The loveliest women must age, grow wrinkled.
Notes: The source sentence suggests the modality of certainty, one extreme on the
possibility continuum. The translation, on the contrary, expresses logic necessity.
TT: We say our press must represent the Party. Does that really mean making out
that everything’s fine?
Notes: While the Chinese noun phrase carries not modality, its
correspondence “our press must represent the Party” expresses the modality of
compulsion/obligation.
Can
Appendix 149
TT: I can only appreciate women as works of art: I don’t want to spoil their beauty.
Notes: Both “can” and its correspondence of express the modality of ability.
TT: Of course their behaviourism serves the bosses. But we can use what’s sci-
entific about it in our modernization.
Notes: In the source sentence, the Chinese word expresses the modality of
obligation. However, shift occurs as it is translated into “can” which expresses in
the context the modality of possibility.
TT: You can’t go on making that comparison for ever. How can you compare the
old days with socialism?
Notes: The second “can” in the translation expresses the modality of possibility,
which is inferred from the source , meaning it is not possible to
draw a comparison.
TT: Chen turned to Wu, “Anything I can do for you?”
Notes: The inferred modality expressed by the source sentence is tentative inference
made on the part of Chen. However, in the translation, it is the ability modality that
is used.
TT: I can see you’ve taken it to heart. That shows a strong sense of responsibility - fine.
150 Appendix
Notes: The clause “I can see”, where “can” expresses the modality of ability, it a
liberal translation which has no correspondence in the source.
Might
TT: They might have a cruel stepmother.
Notes: The tentative possibility expresses by the Chinese adjunct is

translated as “might”.
TT: Even at home she had to watch her step, because if she let herself go there and
it became a habit, she might do the same in her office or in public, scandalizing
everyone.
Notes: The modality of tentative possibility is inferred from the Chinese sentence
structure leading by that expresses hypothetically possible event.
TT: If you won’t buy him a new one, you might at least mend this or get Mrs Wu to
do it. But that wouldn't occur to you, would it?
Notes: The source clause expresses implicitly the

modality of obligation, that a wife’s obligation to take care of her husband. The
translation mitigates the degree of the responsibility through using the modality of
tentative possibility expresses by “might”.
TT: Wu Guodong is really worried that Chen Yongming might slip up.
Appendix 151
Notes: The absence of correspondence between the modal and the source sentence
is resulted from the translator’s strategy of explicitation.
Ought to
TT: He ought to know what’s on our minds, and see our good points too.
Notes: Direct correspondence is formed between and “ought to” and both
of them express the modality of tentative inference.
TT: You really ought to think about Old Wu’s family, and why they keep having
rows.
Notes: The modality of obligation expressed by “ought to” is inferred from the
source based on such words as and .
TT: He ought to forget her.
Notes: The modality that can be inferred from the source sentence is hypothetical.
However, it is shifted to obligation modality via the use of “ought to”.
TT: She ought to understand the sort of life Fang had lived all these years.
Notes: The translation rewrites the source sentence and changes the meaning. While
the source sentence simply narrates a fact, the translation places obligation on the
part of Joy.
152 Appendix
Will
TT: Just wait and see. Some day Daqing will be outclassed, because life moves
forward, grows richer…
Notes: The Chinese adverb is one of the symbols indicating future tense.
Thus, it is a case of direct translationl.
TT: The ministry certainly will delegate all the authority it can to you.
Notes: The source sentence functions approximately as a promise and demonstrates

positive resolution through such words as and . “Will” in the
translation expresses both future tense and the modality of volition on the part of the
ministry represented by the character who makes the utterance.
TT: Of course all this will be very complicated, but our socialist enterprises depend
on it.
Notes: In the source sentence, the clause before entails the modality of
possibility. However, in the translation, “will” expresses the modality of prediction.
May
TT: The strongest characters may be the weakest.
Notes: The modality of possibility is carried by the Chinese word , and is

directly rendered as “may”.
Appendix 153
TT: I’m afraid the strain may be too much for his heart.
Notes: The Chinese word indicates that what is stated afterwards is

something possible. The translation expresses the possibility modality through the
specific modal of “may”.
Shall
TT: We shall need a liaison office.
Notes: The Chinese adverbial phrase indicates that the statement

is about something that may happen in future. The modal “shall” makes the implied
meaning explicit.
III. Illustrations of the Source for Modal Auxiliaries Applied

in Goldblatt’s Translation with Notes as Explanation. ST Stands
Could
TT: Where should he begin? What could he say to help someone so unfamiliar with
industry and economics gain an understanding of all the obstacles in the way of
industrial reform?
Notes: While the first occurrence of is directly translated as “should”, both

of which express the modality of obligation, the translation for the second under-
goes shift as it is translated as “could” which expresses tentative possibility.
154 Appendix
Will
TT: If He Jiabin refuses to go along with him, the man can run to Director Feng,
who will hand the matter over to Department Head Ho, who will in turn get some
clever comrade to take He’s place. There is, after all, no one assigned to the case,
since it falls outside the state plan.
Notes: In the source sentence, the second and third occurrences of express
the possibility modality. However, the translation adopts “will” as their corre-
spondence, which expresses the prediction modality.
TT: It will take some time for her to get used to her new appearance.
Notes: The absence of correspondence between the prediction modality expressed

by “will” and the source sentence results from the strategy of liberal translation
adopted by the translator.
IV. Illustrations for the Correspondence of THERE + BE Structure

Applied in Yang’s Translation (with the Correspondence Marked
in Italic Type if Specification Is Necessary). ST Stands for Source
Text; TT for Target Text
• YOU structure
TT: There was some sense in what he said, immature though it was.
• Non-human subject + predicate + object(optional)

Appendix 155
TT: She was a reporter who sympathized with the victims of injustice and waxed
indignant over all abuses of which there had been so many in recent years.
The ordinary workers and grassroot cadres whom she interviewed trusted her.
• Human subject + predicate + object(optional)
TT: There was no answer.
• Zero subject + predicate + object(optional)
TT: There was no vocabulary to describe the present sharp confrontation.
• Non-specific human subject + predicate + object(optional)
TT: There was something rather intimidating about the closed door of Room 213,
where so many people's fates were decided.
• Single-word or noun-phrase sentence
TT: There was a crash,
• Existential construction
TT: There were no teacups on the table, evidently no one had called.
• Adverbial + subject + predicate + object (optional)
TT: But there was sympathy in this kind-hearted girl’s eyes.

156 Appendix
• Attribute + noun
TT: Then there’s the question of social relationships.
TT: ‘There’s no mystery about it,’ said Yang. ‘All there is to it is keeping everyone
happy.’
V. Illustrations for the Correspondence of the Passive Form

BE + V-En Applied in Yang’s Translation (with
the Correspondence Marked in Italic Type if Specification Is
Necessary). ST Stands for Source Text; TT for Target Text
• Non-human subject + predicate + object(optional)
TT: Lunch was brought in.
• Zero subject + predicate + object(optional)
TT: That could always be changed.
• Human subject + predicate + object(optional)
TT: In 1962 when Joy left college and was assigned to their ministry, she had been
an outstandingly attractive girl.
• BEI structure
Appendix 157
TT: Let’s drink one to Xiaodong. It’s because we’ve got such a good boss that
instead of being run down we’ve made it to the top.
• Attribute + noun
TT: She had never bought fresh vegetables, only the cheap ones that were sold off at
ten cents a pile.
• BA structure
TT: No wonder his application to join the Party had been turned down. He would
have been a menace in the Party.
• Non-specific human subject + predicate + object (optional)
TT: Something must have been knocked over.
• Existential construction
TT: But now that they had gone, if the present chaos in construction was allowed to
continue, how could limited resources be put to best use and waste cut out?
• Verb or verb phrase
TT: He had come to this motor works over twenty years ago when he was
demobbed.
• Subjectless sentence
TT: Now, confound it, they’d all been cleared and were on an equal footing with
him again.
158 Appendix
• Adverbial
TT: I've analysed my faults to the Central Committee, and now I’m making a
self-criticism to you all. I'm determined to mend my ways.
• Noun or noun phrase
TT: Letter-writers who exposed problems should be protected.
TT: Zheng was impressed by his strong sense of self-respect.
VI. Illustrations for the Correspondence of THERE + BE Structure

Applied in Goldblatt’s Translation (with the Correspondence
Marked in Italic Type if Specification Is Necessary). ST Stands
• Subjectless sentence
TT: “Don’t worry about it,” he says casually. ‘As long as you don’t sit on it, there’s
no problem.”
• Verb
TT: There’s talk he’s even had a greenhouse built and hired a gardener.
• Adverbial + verb
TT: There were barbs in his greeting: “I see you have good taste!”
Appendix 159
VII. Illustration for the Correspondence of the Passive Form

BE + V-En Applied in Goldblatt’s Translation. ST Stands
• Adverbial + verb
TT: Whenever he spoke with Zheng Ziyun, Chen Yongming felt charged as if his
heart were filled with the strains of a march that sped up his circulation and infused
him with courage and power.
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Corpora and Intercultural Studies 3

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15588

ISSN 2510-4802 ISSN 2510-4810 (electronic)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018964008

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019

Fig. 3.1 Three-dimensional conception of discourse

Table 4.1 Size of the parallel corpus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

Table 5.22 Downtoners applied in Goldblatt’s translation . . . . . . ....... 96

theorized as contextualized performance through language and discourse is social

1.1 Gender and Language

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 1

Both dominance and difference represented particular moments in feminism: dominance

“expressive” models of language. This approach focuses on the discoursal repre-

1.2 Gender and Translation

The understanding of translation as deeply implicated in power relation and ide-

Yet, despite the undisputed contribution of feminist translation practice and

1.3 Objectives of the Study

1.4 Signiﬁcance of the Study

1.5 Organization of the Book

Baker, P. 2014. Using Corpora to Analyze Gender. London: Bloomsbury.

2.1 Gender and Translation Studies

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 9

subversive language experiments, feminist translation is developed out of a desire

2.1.1 First Paradigm of Gender and Translation Studies

2.1.1.1 Gender as Socio-Political Issue in Macro-Analyses

Implicating gender as a socio-political category in macro-analyses of works of

Women’s Writing, 1783–1823 (Kadish and Massardier-Kenney 1994). The

2.1.1.2 Gender as Categories in Micro-analyses of Translation

When gender is perceived as an analytic category for the micro-analysis of speciﬁc

foregrounding of gender in French, the translator Lotbinière-Hardwood coined new

2.1.1.3 Gender-Related Theorization of Translation

Feminist translation practice concerning the feminist innovative writings have an

She further argues that “the reason translation is so overcoded, so overregulated, is

2.1.1.4 Criticism of the First Paradigm

2.1.2 Second Paradigm of Gender and Translation Studies

2.1.2.1 Status Quo of the Second Paradigm

As the post-structuralist conceptualization of gender as discursive and fluctuating

2.1.2.2 A Critique of the Second Paradigm

2.1.3 Third Wave Feminist Translation Studies

A more formal and schematic initiation of an interdisciplinary framework for the

2.2 Studies on Chenzhong de Chibang and Its Translations

Chenzhong De Chibang [沉重的翅膀] was one masterpiece of Zhang Jie (张洁,

Agorni, M. 2005. A marginal(ized) perspective on translation history: Women and translation in

3.1 Post-structuralist Theorization of Language

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 29

3.1.1 Theorizing Language and Subjectivity

3.1.2 Discourse and Power

Foucault has deﬁned discourse in this way:

According to the above terms, power is relation. It is relation in process in that it

3.2 Theorizing Gender From Post-structuralist

3.2.1 Theorizing Gender

feminism had done, it is more useful to see gender subjectivity as discursively

Influenced to a considerable extent by Foucault and post-structuralism, Butler

In Gender Trouble, Butler deﬁnes gender as “the repeated stylization of the

Therefore, gender is a kind of enforced cultural performance, compelled by

The relational view of gender in Eckert and McConnell-Ginet’s deﬁnition is

3.2.2 Gender and Context

It is generally accepted that meaning is contextual, even “radically contextual”

3.2.3 Gender and Power

As a consequence of this conceptualization of power, a focus upon the local

A person’s contribution to an ongoing discussion is determined not simply by the utterance

3.3 Critical Discourse Analysis as Analytic Framework

3.3.1 Why CDA