Dr. LIU Jianwen, KaceyKaceyDr. LIU Jianwen2023-10-312023-10-312022Liu, Jianwen (2022 Dec 8). Discovering gender stereotypes in translation: A study of the english translations of Mulan Ci (木蘭辭,“The Ballad of Mulan”) by Western Male Translators. International congress on English language education and applied linguistics 2022.http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11861/8440The Ballad of Mulan (Mulan Ci (木蘭辭) is a widely recited folk poem in Chinese culture. It celebrates the filial piety of the heroine, Mulan, who has joined the army on behalf of her father. Not only is this story passed down across generations and familiar to the Chinese people, but it is also widely known globally by its various forms of adaptations and translations. This article investigates, from a perspective informed by feminist translation criticism, the representative English translations of the Chinese poem conducted by renowned male translators. Based on the investigation that the male translations are inadequate in presenting the female protagonist’s true voice, the article argues that translation is a gendered activity where a translator’s gender-cultural presuppositions play a significant role in the translation. It is found that the male translators have projected their stereotypical perceptions about the literary image of Chinese women in their interpretation of Mulan. Mulan’s subjectivity as a legendary woman has been reconstructed in the male-translated discourse due to the absence of the translators’ gender sensitivity in rendering gender-related text.enConference Paper