| Abstract [eng] |
The aim of this thesis is to determine how gender meanings are reconstructed when reading the Lithuanian translation of “The Handmaid’s Tale” as a stand-alone work and comparing it with the English version. First, the context of feminist theories, the problems of social gender in translation and the importance of translation as an independent object of analysis are discussed. The analysis is based on a qualitative research approach, which includes discourse analysis and comparative analysis of the original and the translation. The theoretical basis is Sara Mills' feminist stylistic theory and Andrew Chesterman's semantic translation strategies. The analysis focuses on how aspects of the representation of women such as infantilisation, dehumanisation of the body, militarisation, sexualisation, the impact of the male gaze and the ritualisation of pregnancy are preserved or transformed in the Lithuanian translations. It is noticeable that women are often portrayed as objects whose value depends on their fertility, and their bodies are fragmented and identified with flowers, food or ritual objects. Men are more often presented as subjects of power and their bodies are de-eroticised and dehumanised. A comparative analysis of the translation and the original reveals that in the Lithuanian translation, semantic emphases are often shifted, meanings are fleshed out or abstracted, and in some cases semantic nuances are highlighted or downplayed, often compensating for these nuances elsewhere in the text. The translation reveals the ideological content of the original, but at the same time re-creates it according to the norms of the Lithuanian language. The analysis confirms that feminist stylistics is a fruitful tool for the analysis of translations, and that meanings related to social gender remain emotionally and culturally influential in both the original and the translation. The results show that the shifts in social gender meanings do not interfere with the reading of the novel as a stand-alone work. |
