Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book. This book studies translating feminism in China through an examination of Chinese translation of two feminist works from a feminist position. It examines several Chinese translations of two typical feminist works: The Second Sex (TSS) by Simone de Beauvoir, and The Vagina Monologues (TVM) by Eve Ensler. TSS is a complex academic work with a pivotal analysis of women's oppression by men, exposing the cultural construction of woman. TVM is a bold feminist dramatic work of body writing, which tells happy or unhappy stories of women's sexualities and eroticisms, especially women's relationships with their vaginas. Feminist translation theory nourished the renewal of scholarly interest in translation from the 1990s, giving fresh impetus to the 'cultural turn' of translation studies for its discourse. Feminism allows translation to be viewed as a form of re-writing within specific historical, social, and cultural context, re-writing that always implicates the translator's subjectivity.