Reconstructing gendered subjectivity in translation: Imagological analysis of female representation in Mo Yan’s frog

Abstract

How do translators mediate gendered subjectivity in cross-cultural literary translation? This article explores this question by examining the representation of female characters in Mo Yan’s novel Frog and its English translation by Howard Goldblatt. Adopting an imagological approach—integrating literary imagology with translation studies—we analyze how the translator reconstructs the image of Chinese rural women at lexical, hierarchical, and narrative levels. A comparative corpus of 50 key passages was qualitatively coded for lexical substitutions, hierarchical shifts, and narrative emphases introduced in translation. The findings reveal that Goldblatt employs 3 main strategies in translating female subjectivity: lexical sanitization of derogatory or culture-specific terms, hierarchical equalization of gender power relations, and narrative reinforcement of traditional female imagery.These shifts suggest that the translator, influenced by both translatorial habitus and the target culture’s collective imagination, subtly disciplines the portrayal of women.This study’s imagological analysis highlights the translator’s visible role in shaping cultural images, offering a “cultural filter” model for examining how translation can challenge or reinforce prevailing stereotypes. The research contributes to translation studies by demonstrating how feminist subjectivities and cultural perceptions are negotiated in translation, and it provides insights into the potential of literary translation to either subvert or perpetuate Orientalist biases in global literary exchange.