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GENDER IN TRANSLATION
Sherry Simon
Taking Gendered
Positions in Translation
Theory
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Translation is for
women??? necessarily defective reputed females
Translators - handmaidens to authors
Women - inferior to men
The translator occupies a (culturallyspeaking) female position-Nicole WardJouve
I am a translator because I am a womanSusanne de Lotbiniere-Harwood
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Feminist translation theory
aims to identify and critique the tangle ofconcepts which relegates both women andtranslation to the bottom of the social andliterary ladder
women turned to translation as a permissibleform of public expression
translation was an important part of the socialmovements in which women participated, such as
the fight against slavery
First Wave Feminism- women have translated inorder to build communication networks and toexpress their political convictions
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GENDER IN TRANSLATION STUDIES
the cultural turn
developments in translation studies
what do translations do, how do they
circulate in the world and elicit response?
The shift emphasizes the reality of
translations as documents which exist
materially and move about, add to our store
of knowledge, and contribute to the ongoing
changes in aesthetics
TRANSLATION- process of mediation which does
not stand above ideology but works through
it
Translation=feminism
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Translation became a strong mode of
expression for women
During the English Renaissance,
women were encouraged to translate
religious texts when they were
forbidden from undertaking any
other kind of public writing
activity
During that time, womens texts are
translated only by womentranslators, mens by men
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Engendered theory
Ipinapaliwanag ang pagsasalin sa pamamagitanng talinhaga. Property
Clothing
John Florio Nang ituring niyang female ang pagsasalin, nagsimula
ang malawakang paggamit ng sexual o gendered na mgakataga para tukuyin ang awtor, tagasalin, orihinal atsalin.
Lorie Chamberlain Isa lamang daw labanan para sa kapangyarihan ang
paggawa ng mga talinhaga para sa mga katagang nabanggitkanina.
Deuteronomy 21:12-14 by Thomas Drant
Menage Tulad ng mga babae, ang mga salin ay maaaring maging
maganda o tapat, ngunit hindi maaaring maging magandaat tapat.
Jacques Derrida Kailangan ng orihinal at salin ang isat isa.
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Fidelity reconstrued
Susan Bassnett
Ang kontemporaryong pag-aaral ng pagsasalin
ay masyadong nakatuon sa lumang konsepto na
ang orihinal at ang salin ay dalawangmagkasalungat na bagay.
Ang pagsasalin ay dapat ituring na isang
malayang paglikha ng kahulugan.
Barbara Godard
Transformance
Nagsasama ang makababaeng pagsusulat at
pagsasalin upang magamit ang mga pamantayan ng
babae para sa pagbuo ng kahulugan.
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Authority and Responsibility
Ang pagkakaroon ng kapangyarihan
ay isang malaking bahagi sa pag-
aaral ng pagsasalin.
Sinong magtatakda kung tiyak ang
tumbas sa isang salin?
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Von Flotow Ang tatlong pamamaraan ng mga kababaihan sa
pagsasalin
Supplementingpamalit sa mga
pagkakaiba sa lenggwahe na
nangangailangan ng interbensyon ng
tagasalin. Tinatawag din itong
compensation.
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Prefacing and footnoting kinagawian safeministang pagsasalin; ipinapaliwanag angintensiyon ng orihinal na teksto atbinabalangkas ang kanyang sarilingestratehiya sa pagsasalin.
Nagbibigay-pansin sa proseso at metodong
isinagawa sa pagsasalin.
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Hijacking ang kontrobersyal na pagsasalin.
mas tinatalakay ang problematikong
bahagi sa pagsasalin; appropriation of a text whose intentions
are not necessarily feminist by the feministtranslator;
the translator corrects the language;
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Literal translation:
this evening, Im entering history without
pulling up my skirt. Feminist translation:
this evening, Im entering history without
opening my legs. (Linda Gaboriau)
Natumbasan ba ang salin?
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Ang makababaeng pagsasalin ay hindisalungat sa orihinal; sa halip ay lalo panitong pinapalalim ang orihinal.
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Challenging Grammatical Gender
Two aspects of language:
Naming strategies
Grammatical gender-markings
Gender: derived from a term meaning class or
kind and referred to the division of Greek
nouns into masculine, feminine, or neuter.
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Grammatical gender
Nouns are placed in classes not
according to their meaning butaccording to their form.
Gender is not normally considered a
significant element of language
for translation.
Roman Jakobsongrammatical gender
can be invested with meaning in
certain cases.
It can take a symbolic meaning.
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Gender differences serve as the unquestioned
foundations of our cultural life.
Deborah Cameron
Metaphorical gender binary oppositional
structure of gender.
Despite the absence of a strict version ofgrammatical gender, gender distinctions
continue to operate massively through the
English language.
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Howard Scott
His role as a translator was to provide an
equivalent political message.
Academe Francaise
Insist of the rule of the predominance of
the masculine over the feminine.Masculine takes precedence over the
feminine.
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Sussane de Lotbiniere-Harwood
we need to resex language
Aims to make the feminine visible inlanguage so that women are seen and heardin the world.
Use bold e to indicate the foregrounding ofgender in French no one ignores the fact
that everything is language. Capitalization which leads to the messageof the text: HuMan Rights
The masculine pronoun he and
generic man = universal signifier.Michele Causse feminizes words which
are not normally feminized inFrench.
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Nicole Brossard and Barbara Godard
They used techniques and perceptions of
modernism and post modernism to
investigate the very processes through
which meaning comes to be.
Nicole Brossard
Most important contemporary feminist writer
to investigate these processes of meaning
creation.
Her writing is important for its powerfulavant-garde techniques, which have engaged
the theory and practice of feminist
translator.
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Barbara Godard
Translator of Brossard
Tessera Journal of womens writing and translation.
Canadian periodical linking English and French
speaking feminists.
Some excerpt in her translation diary
permits an understanding of some of the
complexities of interplay between Nicole
Brossards writing, in particular Picture
Theory.
Metonymic or Contigent [23] translation isnot a carrying across, but a reworking of
meaning.
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Picture Theory
Godard exposes difficulty in translating a text
which unfolds at the intersection of science,
philosophy and postmodernism.
A text held together not by narrative but bynetworks of signifier.
Godard used transferentialprocess of
translation reading subject becoming the
writing subject.
Godards translation follows the mode of meaninggenerated.
She uses her own devices and meaning of the
signifier. Thus, the reader is reading both their
works.
Works of translation within its own writings
done through repetition.
The project of the feminist translator concords
with the impulse of the text.
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The Violence of Appropriation
Rosemary Arrojo feminist translation
appears simply to be a reverse-image of
masculinist configurations.
Revaluation of the dialectic between
translator and text.
The feminist translator affirms her role
as an active participant in the creation
of meaning.
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Ideologically Unfriendly Text
The principle of feminist are best
illustrated when applied to text =
active process of re-writing.
Translation is a way for writer to
gain creative stimulation.
Gender = new axis around which
writing relastionships are
created. Translation is notwithout its frustration.
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International Communities
Increased attention is given to
politics of transmission
The very idea of an international
feminist community cutting across
barriers of national identity
brought with it a necessary
concern for the work of
translators
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Example: Women Writing in India
(Tharu and Lalita.1993)
Criteria for judging: translation takes
place where two, invariably unequal, worlds
collide, emphasizing the inequality
between the worlds represented. Some texts could not be integrated becauseof failure of their translation.
Another failure is the attention to the
specificity of the source languages of
their texts.
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The Historical Dimension
Contradictory pulls of different ideological
pressures can be a problem in translating
texts which are historically, as well as
culturally, distant.
Example: Translating Slavery (Kadish andMassardier-Kenney 1994).
Issues of gender and race, questioning the
position of both writer and translator.
The editors show how text are nourished by
Western condescension and by exoticizing forms
of cultural imperialism
Their texts use what we today consider
derogatory epithets for describing foreign
cultures.
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Translators of Madame de Staels
Mirza introduce a new language :
Wolof
Instead of French to English, they choose
to translate it from French to Wolof.
Ability to communicate was constrained bya passage through the imperial language.
Code-swithing becomes a way of inscribing
multiplicity in a text.
Strategy of supplementing or hijacking.
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Poeticity : faire texte or
faire oeuvre
Ethical character: Respect for the
original, respect for the reader and
respect for the readers complexity.
Translators have all the rights aslong as their game is played up
front.
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Every significant translation is
grounded in a project, in an
articulated goal. This project isdetermined by both the position of
the translator and by the specific
demands of the work to be
translated. horizon parameters of the
translating project
Understand the subjectivity of the
translator
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Berman emphasizes the power of the
translating subject Translating subject carries critical
authority
position- building of the self-awareness
of the translator within the domain of thescriptural.
Relation of the translator to her
writing project which creates the
condition for successful translation
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Maramingsalamat po!