New Perspectives on Gender and Translation

New Voices for Transnational Dialogues

Eleonora Federici, José Santaemilia

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000467765
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This collection expands the body of research on the intersection of gender and translation to highlight perspectives across different countries in Europe, showcasing developments in the field from its origins in the emergence of feminist translation in Quebec over the last thirty years.

Building off seminal work on feminist translation by scholars in Canada in the 1980s and 1990s, the book explores the evolution of the discipline in shifting translation practices and research across a range of European countries, with a focus on underrepresented areas such as Malta, Serbia, and Poland. The different chapters examine key developments such as the critical reframing of gender and identity, the viewing of historical translation activity by women through the lens of ideological and political motivations, and the analysis of socio-political contexts where feminist or gender-inspired translation has impacted translators' practices. The volume looks concurrently at the European context and beyond it, putting the spotlight on new voices in translation and gender research in the region but also encouraging transnational dialogues on key issues in the discipline, pushing the field further into new directions.

This book will be of particular interest to scholars in translation studies, gender studies, and European literature.

1 Gender and Translation in/from Europe

Reviewing the Translation and Feminism Interface

José Santaemilia

DOI: 10.4324/9780429352287-1

1.1 Gender and Translation: Towards a De-Westernisation of a Growing Discipline

It is a fact that the intersection between gender and translation has been generating an important literature over the last three decades, and that scholarly attention grows by the day. The name of the “transdiscipline” (Flotow and Scott 2016, 349) is still in dispute, and will probably be in the coming years, although three terms seem to stand out—gender and translation (sometimes translation and gender), feminist translation, and woman and translation (Santaemilia 2017). This variety (or instability) may show the combined effects of a number of causes—i.e. a plurality of intellectual interests, a diversity of epistemic perspectives or perhaps an adherence to several theories or methodologies. One may also argue that there is an implicit resistance to endorse the full range of connotations associated with specific terms, such as feminism, gender or even woman. Apart from these three terms, which are the most (statistically) significant, there are others that crop up here and there, as evidence of the maturity of a field that is becoming more complex. Among these terms, we can mention translating gender, gender in translation, sexuality and translation, queer translation, translation of identity, and so on.

In spite of the variability of denominations and of epistemological projects, the number of publications attests to the vitality of a field that has been growing significantly over the last few years. In the Anglo-American world, universities and other institutions have been offering courses for at least two decades. In Europe, however, and although the field has acquired some measure of institutionalisation (particularly with the organisation of international conferences and seminars, and with the completion of doctoral projects), full academic recognition and respect are still not the norms. A deep-seated intellectual suspicion haunts the minds of many academics and the public at large. The presence of feminism (and of women) in many European classrooms is still a troubling one for many (mostly male) academics. Regrettably, one may safely hypothesise that feminism is still a “dirty word” (Federici 2018) for many people, even in the Western world.

In this picture of lights and shadows, one thing is for sure: the field is becoming recognisable (if not fully respected yet), as it has generated a (more or less common) critical idiom, a recurrent terminology, and a sizeable repertoire of themes and concepts. And, perhaps most importantly, it has created an academically respectable and politically committed instrument in order to describe, criticise, and subvert an oppressive tradition of gender and sexual inequality.

An indication of the institutionalisation of the gender and translation field is the fact that several publications have already reviewed its evolution. Following the seminal books by Simon (1996) and Flotow (1997), which settled the agenda for the following years, a number of efforts at defining, shaping, and (ultimately) historicising the transdiscipline have appeared (Flotow 2007, 2019; Godayol 2013, 2019; Baer and Massardier-Kenney 2016).

Flotow (2007) distinguished two broad paradigms within feminist translation practice. The first paradigm of feminist translators basically revolves around two antithetical identities (man and woman), focusing more specifically “on women as a special minority group within ‘patriarchal’ society that has been subject to usually biased treatment” (Flotow 2007, 93). Translators working within this paradigm innovate language and create feminist meanings, “draw[ing] attention to their deliberate textual manipulations” (Flotow 2019, 229). A second paradigm “derives from the relatively new idea that the diversity of sexual orientation and gender, class distinction, ethnicity, race and other socio-political factors is so great that it is impossible, or unwise, or meaningless to identify as primarily male or female” (Flotow 2007, 93). Gender, then, as a critical category, is understood as a contingent, unstable, and performative act, along the lines of Judith Butler, who attributes a political significance to gender categories, as gender is “an illusion discursively maintained for the purpose of the regulation of sexuality within the obligatory frame of reproductive heterosexuality” (Butler 1990, 136). The distinction of first versus second paradigm somehow replicates the essentialist versus social constructionist divide found in gender and language studies (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 2003), but it is difficult to apply unproblematically to the actual practice of feminist translation, in Quebec or elsewhere, which for the most part has remained untested to date.

Baer and Massardier-Kenney (2016, 83) rephrase this in terms of sexual dynamics revealing the “theoretical tension between a minoritarian, or civil rights, model, which posits the existence of more or less stable and discrete categories of gay/straight, and a universalist model, according to which sexual desire is polymorphous.” The significant change here is the incorporation of sexuality as a key analytical category, quite often absent from the configuration of a broad gender and translation field. Though less developed than the study of gender, Baer and Massardier-Kenney underline the importance of the focus on sexuality in translation studies since the 1970s, emphasising its “activist bent” in order to “redress the imbalance of power in traditional patriarchal societies, where masculinity and heterosexuality are the privileged embodiment of gender/sexuality” (83). When illustrating the main approaches to gender and translation thus far, they distinguish a “feminist engagé approach” (87)—whose main strategies are emphasising feminine difference in texts or recovery of “lost” or little-known women translators—from a “‘memoir-approach,’ i.e., when women scholars or translators reflect on the ways in which their gender identification and that of the source-text author influence their practice” (87).

In her review of the discipline, Godayol (2013, 2019) stresses the importance of the “archaeological research” already carried out, and also to be carried out in future, in order to unearth the “lost” women writers and translators that have been completely ignored under patriarchy. This is a task Godayol and her research group have been carrying out in the Catalan context for the last 20 years, thus bringing out the “symbolic mothers”—e.g. Virginia Woolf and Simone de Beauvoir as obvious examples—who may serve as role models for the present and future generations of women writers and translators. This archaeological work—or “paleographic task,” in Godayol’s (2013, 174) words—is akin to Massardier-Kenney’s (1997) feminist strategy of recovery, which has led to a fruitful widening and reshaping of the canon, with the rediscovery of myths, women translators and “feminine textualities” (Godayol 2013, 178). Specifically invoked by Godayol (2013), Foucault’s idea of archaeology—which “describes discourses as practices specified in the element of the archive” (Foucault 1972, 148)—looms on the horizon. For Mills (2003, 24), Foucault’s archaeology “can be regarded as the analysis of the system of unwritten rules which produces, organises and distributes the ‘statement’ (that is, the authorised utterance) as it occurs in an archive (that is, an organised body of statements).”

Without a doubt, over the last two decades, the discipline has gained visibility and accumulated critical awareness and activist potential. A last significant issue is a turn towards a transnational scenario. Along the lines of Tymoczko’s (2009, 404) call in translation studies “to look beyond the boundaries of our own cultures,” a shift is clearly perceived towards a “translocal” (Costa and Alvarez 2014) or “transnational” feminism—i.e. the “need for feminists to engage in productive dialogue and negotiations across multiple geopolitical and theoretical borders” (Flotow 2019, 557). Castro and Ergun (2017), Flotow and Farahzad (2017), or Flotow and Kamal (2020) are recent examples of this growing trend. In a globally interconnected world, the move seems an obviously positive and good-willed way ahead. Other aspects, however, should be taken into account, starting from the fact that it seems problematic and exoticising—to say the least—to speak of “transnational” bonds when they are predicated both on universalistic terms and on a stereotypical, even patriarchal, view of local or national cultures. Besides, the use of English as a global academic language, which generates an “aggressively multilingual and culturally parochial” readership (Venuti 1992, 6) and contributes to the marginalisation of feminist thought beyond the Anglo-American world (Descarries 2014), is another important concern that must not be overlooked. By definition, translation aims to be a transnational endeavour, but not only in/through English. These lines, I am afraid, constitute both an affirmation and a denial of this will.

The literature on gender/sexuality and translation is growing day by day, mostly in English but increasingly in other languages as well. The Canadian (or Québecoise) factor (Flotow 2006), which helped to mobilise a radical gender politics in the practice and the theorisation of translation, seems to have died away, after bearing its fruits; today it remains as a mythical origin of a larger project for social and sexual transformation, of a movement (characterised by resistance and activism) whose main aim is to reclaim and rewrite women’s language and experiences in equal and respectful terms.

The initial Canadian impetus was subsequently followed by an interest in the United States (Levine 1991; Massardier-Kenney 1997; Maier 1998) and, with the turn of the century, by widespread academic popularity in Europe, with a wealth of seminars and conferences (Graz, Valencia, Vic, Cosenza, Naples, Málaga, Santander) and a sustained line of publications (Godayol 2000, 2020; Dépêche 2002; Grbic and Wolf 2002; Santaemilia 2003, 2005, 2017; Leonardi 2007; Federici 2011; Palusci 2011; Federici and Leonardi 2013; Camus et al. 2017; Keilhauer and Pagni 2017; Di Giovanni and Zanotti 2018) that is likely to continue.

While this European focus seems strong enough, a desire (at both theoretical and practical levels) to de-Westernise gender and translation studies is clearly visible, if not openly stated, out of a mixture of attitudes such as (global) political correctness, a sort of decolonising strategy, mere fad or, perhaps more importantly, a genuine need for a concerted action transnationally. A need is felt to go beyond the Anglo-American area, beyond Europe, in a word, beyond the Western world though—surprisingly—in English. While the “European factor” is overwhelmingly present in the field, and English is the de facto international language of expression and dissemination of gender and translation issues, new interest, and occasionally new voices and new languages, seem to emerge. Particularly noticeable are publications on gender-related aspects in translations from Chinese (Lee 2014; Yu 2015; Liang 2017; Meng 2019; Huang and Valdeón 2019) or Turkish (Bozkurt 2014; Üstünsöz 2015; Cengiz 2017, 2020; Aktener 2019). Another key geopolitical area is Latin(a) America, as attested, among others, by Alvarez et al. (2014), Costa and Alvarez (2014), Tipiani (2017), and a very recent special issue of Mutatis Mutandis 13(2), edited by Luciana Carvalho Fonseca et al. (2020), entirely devoted to the topic of women and translation in Latin America and the Caribbean. Recent collaborative projects led by Canadian scholar Luise von Flotow (Flotow and Farahzad 2017; Flotow and Kamal 2020) have opened the door to voices and experiences from other territories such as Morocco, Colombia, Sri Lanka, Iran, Iraq, India, Japan, Egypt, etc. At present, though, the gender/sexuality and translation field is a thriving one, which is guided by valuable but, ultimately and at best, basical...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Contributors
• Introduction: A European Gender and Translation Geography: A Diversity of Voices for Transnational Dialogues
• 1 Gender and Translation in/from Europe: Reviewing the Translation and Feminism Interface
• 2 Three Generations of British Women Translators: Sarah Austin’s Legacy in the Long Nineteenth Century
• 3 Multilingualism and Women Translators in the Mediterranean Island of Malta
• 4 Polish Women Translators in the Twentieth Century
• 5 There Is Only One Way in Serbia: The Reception of Gender Equality in Serbian Translation
• 6 Reclaiming Ancestry/Resisting Amnesia: Finding the “Other” Half in Portuguese-American Women Writers
• 7 “The Personal Is Political”: Radical Feminism and Translation in the Post-Franco Era
• 8 Feminisms across the Ocean: Translating Theories and Practices
• 9 (Un)Successful Feminisms?: Mapping Chick Lit Fiction in Europe
• 10 Marie Darrieussecq, Translator: Or How to Write French from a Female Body
• Index