International Journal of Language & Linguistics

Feminist Utopian Novel in a Transnational Context: with a Reference to Bai Hua’s the Remote Country of Women
Tzu-yi Elaine Lee

Abstract
The book The Remote Country of Women, written by Bai Hua has been regarded as a powerful feminist utopian novel. It strongly criticizes patriarchy and embodies women’s dream to operate the world by the female principle or the Way of Nature. Nonetheless, due to political issues and language barriers, the novel has so far received little critical attention and has been under-researched in scholarship at home or abroad. The study sets out to investigate the novel and its corresponding English translation version by two translators. More importantly, it explores the way how the feminist awareness is manifested in translation. In order to examine the translators’ feminist awareness, critical discourse analysis would be applied as theoretical as well as methodological framework for the researcher to go on a bottom-up examination. With the text analysis as support, the study hopes to demonstrate that the translated version of the feminist utopian novel plays an important role in enhancing more understanding of Chinese matrilineality and female principles for foreign readers during the 1980s.

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