Translating Feminisms In China

This volume, which brings together articles by scholars and activists in China, Japan, Canada and the US in multiple disciplines, seeks to illuminate the problems and possibilities involved in translating feminism from the metropolitan ‘West’ to a locale rife with its own ideas about gender, class, the body and sexuality. Furthermore, these articles showcase the centrality of gender in the formation of modern China by demonstrating the extent to which translated feminisms – whatever they mean – have transformed the terms in which modern Chinese understand their own subjectivities and histories. This book is essential reading for students, academics and general readers interested in East Asia, comparative women’s history, feminist texts and the politics of translation.

This book explores translation of feminism in China through examining several Chinese translations of two typical feminist works: The Second Sex (TSS, Beauvoir 1949/1952) and The Vagina Monologues (TVM, Ensler 1998). TSS exposes the cultural construction of woman while TVM reveals the pervasiveness of sexual oppression toward women. The female body and female sexuality (including lesbian sexuality) constitute a challenge to the Chinese translators due to cultural differences and sexuality still being a sensitive topic in China. This book investigates from gender and feminist perspectives, how TSS and TVM have been translated and received in China, with special attention to how the translators meet the challenges. Since translation is the gateway to the reception of feminism, an examination of the translations should reveal the response to feminism of the translator as the first reader and gatekeeper, and how feminism is translated both ideologically and technically in China. The translators’ decisions are discussed within the social, historical, and political contexts. Translating Feminism in China discusses, among other issues: Feminist Translation: Practice, Theory, and Studies Translating the Female Body and Sexuality Translating Lesbianism Censorship, Sexuality, and Translation This book will be relevant to postgraduate students and researchers of translation studies. It will also interest academics interested in feminism, gender studies and Chinese literature and culture. Zhongli Yu is Assistant Professor of Translation Studies at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC).

The book repositions He-Yin Zhen as central to the development of feminism in China, juxtaposing her writing with fresh translations of works by two of her better-known male interlocutors. The editors begin with a detailed portrait of He-Yin Zhen's life and an analysis of her thought in comparative terms. They then present annotated translations of six of her major essays, as well as two foundational tracts by her male contemporaries, Jin Tianhe (1873-1947) and Liang Qichao (1873-1929), to which He-Yin's work responds and with which it engages. Jin Tianhe, a poet and educator, and Liang Qichao, a philosopher and journalist, understood feminism as a paternalistic cause that "enlightened" male intellectuals like themselves should defend. Zhen counters with an alternative conception of feminism that draws upon anarchism and other radical trends in thought.

This edited book addresses the diversity across time and space of the sites, actors and practices of feminist translation from 1945-2000. The contributors examine what happens when a politically motivated text is translated linguistically and culturally, the translators and their aims, and the strategies employed when adapting texts to locally resonating discourses. The collection aims to answer these questions through case studies and a conceptual rethinking of the process of politically engaged translation, considering not only trained translators and publishers, but also feminist activists and groups, NGOs and writers. The book will be of interest to students and researchers in the fields of translation studies, gender/women's studies, literature and feminist history.

This book brings together and engages with theories of globalization, transnational feminism, travelling theory and cultural translation, exploring the travelling routes of feminist theory and practice to China over recent decades. With attention to the crucial questions of why and how knowledge travels or fails to travel, the forms that it takes and by whom it is sent, received, understood, translated, or even refused, the author examines the development and activities of different groups of women and women's organisations in China, thus developing an alternative form of travelling theory.

Research has shown that feminist theory has flowed far more easily from North to South and from West to East, wheras travel in other directions has proved almost non-existent. While the hegemony of US feminist theory has been challenged in Europe, for example, there remain many ‘invisible’ discursive trajectories that link the development of feminist theories and movements across the world. This book brings together and engages with theories of globalisation, transnational feminism, travelling theory and cultural translation, exploring the travelling routes of feminist theory and practice to China over recent decades. With attention to the crucial questions of why and how knowledge travels or fails to travel, the forms that it takes and by whom it is sent, received, understood, translated, or even refused, the author examines the development and activities of different groups of women and women’s organisations in China, thus developing an alternative form of travelling theory. A study of the cross-cultural translation of knowledge and practices that occur or fail to occur when different cultures interact, and their impact, this book will appeal to scholars of gender studies, sociology and cultural studies with interests in feminist thought and the travel and production of knowledge.

Feminist contentions in socialist state formation: a case study of the Shanghai Women's Federation -- The political perils in 1957: struggles over "women's liberation"--Creating a socialist feminist cultural front: women of China -- When a Maoist "class" intersected gender -- Chen Bo'er and the feminist paradigm of socialist film -- Fashioning socialist visual culture: Xia Yan and the new culture heritage -- The cultural origins of the Cultural Revolution -- The Iron Girls: gender and class in cultural representations -- Conclusion: socialist state feminism and its legacies in capitalist China

The year 1995, when the Fourth World Conference on Women was held in Beijing, marks a historical milestone in the development of the Chinese feminist movement. In the decades that followed, three distinct trends emerged: first, there was a rise in feminist NGOs in mainland China and a surfacing of LGBTQ movements; second, social and economic developments nurtured new female agency, creating a vibrant, women-oriented cultural milieu in China; third, in response to ethnocentric Western feminism, some Chinese feminist scholars and activists recuperated the legacies of socialist China’s state feminism and gender policies in a new millennium. These trends have brought Chinese women unprecedented choices, resources, opportunities, pitfalls, challenges, and even crises. In this timely volume, Zhu and Xiao offer an examination of the ways in which Chinese feminist ideas have developed since the mid-1990s. By juxtaposing the plural “feminisms” with “Chinese characteristics,” they both underline the importance of integrating Chinese culture, history, and tradition in the discussions of Chinese feminisms, and, stress the difference between the plethora of contemporary Chinese feminisms and the singular state feminism. The twelve chapters in this interdisciplinary collection address the theme of feminisms with Chinese characteristics from different perspectives rendered from lived experiences, historical reflections, theoretical ruminations, and cultural and sociopolitical critiques, painting a panoramic picture of Chinese feminisms in the age of globalization.