Feminist Consciousness in English Translation of Eileen Chang’s Red Rose, White Rose

Abstract

There are two English versions of Red Rose, White Rose, a representative short story of Eileen Chang. One is the version of K. S. Kingsbury in 2007 and the other is that of Thompson Brown in 1978. This paper studies the differences in translation features and strategies of the two versions and how the difference translation affects the representation of the personality of characters in the story. It is found out that the female translator Kingsbury adopts “supplementing” and “hijacking” to interpret feminist consciousness in the original and that of herself more thoroughly while the male translator Brown translates the novel more faithfully with traditional translation strategies perhaps due to the shackles of patriarchal thoughts, which reflects the gender differences of translators.