subject: Problematic Issues about Gender in Translation [print this page] Problematic Issues about Gender in Translation
In Gender and Translation, Sherry Simon establishes an interesting link between translation, gender and cultural studies. Following the tradition of second wave feminism, she underlines estrangement and not equalitarianism in gender and cultural studies. It follows that she equates translation with difference and not with transparency .Simon's new logic of exchange forecasts that the role of translation is that of recognizing and punctuating differences. Within this framework there is little room for textual fluency and invisibility since translation is an activity that, according to her, at once elicits and confuses the link between self and community, recognition and estrangement.
In 189 pages divided in five chapters, Simon revisits the history of feminist intellectuals in several activities of intercultural transmission of knowledge, including translation. It is, indeed, an interesting and enlightening critical and historical trip into the often times ghostly participation of women translators in cultural and political events. Her prose is light; her interesting arguments although basic knowledge on the principles of post-modern thought can make her reading easier. The women writers and translators whose histories she tells us about are, however, depicted almost as round fictional characters: their work and lives so intrinsically embedded in each other that it be-comes difficult to tell them apart. It is in those passages that her text is the most interesting.
Steiner's observation about differences in communication between men and women as they engage in the activity of language ("inside or between languages, human communication equals translation") by focusing on gender in translation is also interesting.
According to Cameron (2003), ideologies of language and gender are specific to their time and place: "they vary across cultures and historical periods, and they are inflected by representations of other social characteristics" (p. 452). Under influence of these socio-historical characteristics, (social) gender is now viewed as a fluctuating variable over time which could be placed within or between societies and cultures.
Societal and cultural factors play an important role in understanding the fluid and dynamic nature of social gender. As Romaine (1999) maintains, different cultures vary in their expectations about what it means to be a man or woman; therefore, they may have different systems of stereotypical classification for gender. She refers to the handbooks traditionally written by both men and women in western societies in which expectations of what it means to be a man or woman (in those societies, in a specific period of time) are expressed, and argues that these expectations may vary across different societies and cultures: "When used by different persons in different [] cultures," Romaine (1999) explains, "the same linguistic features can, often mean very different things" (p. 5).
As mentioned earlier, the assignment of social gender is highly dependent on societal factors which are, however, subjected to change over time. Therefore, another important characteristic of social gender, as Nissen (2002) aptly notices, can be "its dependency on time" (p. 31). Referring to the occupational title of secretary, Nissen (2002) shows how the gender role associated with this title has been reversed over time as societal changes occurred: "It may surprise people today to learn that only one century ago this occupation was predominantly executed by men. In the 19th century, then, the social gender of secretary was 'male', i.e. the opposite of what it is today" (p. 31). He also refers to Lyons (1977), giving another example: "at the turn of this century [= 1900, UKN] in Britain the expression 'lady typist' was quite commonly employed in contexts (e.g. in advertisements) in which 'typist' would now be used" (cited in Nissen, 2002: 31). Nissen (2002) construes the quotation implying that the word typist' had a masculine connotation at the beginning of the 20th century, "because typist' without any sex-specific modification referred to man alone" (p. 32). He holds that, over time, as a result of changes in social status, the social gender of the word typist' has changed, so that the necessity of marking the word with attributes of lady' or female' in order to employ female applicants is now obviated.
Simon tells us about Aphra Behn, the first professional woman writer who translated from Latin and Greek when knowing the classics was barred from women. She goes on with the cosmopolitanism of Madame de Stael and the influence her work had upon the development of translation studies and, particularly, the political consequences exerted by translation in literary exchanges. Her historical account reports on the challenges faced by Eleanor Marx (Karl Marx's daughter) who translated Madame Bovary during the time where the author, Flaubert, was on trial for immorality. The examples for-warded by the author of female participation in the contestation and transmission of knowledge bear numerous and it is not my aim to report them all here. The objective is just to give a hint of how interesting this part of Simon's book is.
I think Gender in Translation is a work which tries to put together the several inequalities which postmodernism, post-colonialism and post-structural thought have uncovered. It attempts to in corporate into the project of second wave feminism a translation practice, which abides to post-modern aesthetics while resisting to political, cultural and gender domination. In this context, translation becomes a metaphor for the acknowledgement of the otherness, for a logic of difference, for a process of ongoing negotiation where knowing them means knowing us and vice-versa.
As it is mentioned in the above, languages may differ greatly in the way they encode the category of gender in their lexical and grammatical systems. They may also differ in the expectations of their relevant cultures concerning what is meant by gender. We all know that every translation inevitably entails making a number of choices; moreover, there is a strategy behind every choice, and a reason behind every strategy.
References
Chamberlain, L. (1998). Gender Metaphorics in Translation. In M. backer (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Ttranslation Studies (pp. 93-96). London: Routledge.
Corbett, G. (1991). Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Litosseliti, L. & Sunderland, J. (2002). Gender Identity and Discourse Analysis: Theoretical and Empirical Considerations. In L. Litosseliti & J. Sunderland (Ed.) Gender Identity and Discourse Analysis (pp. 1- ). Philadelphia: PA John Benjamins Publishing co.
Livia, A. (2003). "One Man in Two is a Woman": Linguistic Approaches to Gender in Literary Texts. In J. Holmes & M. Meyerhoff (Ed.) The Handbook of Language and Gender. (pp. 142-158). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
McConnell-Ginet, S. (2003). "What's in a Name?" Social Labeling and Gender Practices. In J. Holmes & M. Meyerhoff (Ed.) The Handbook of Language and Gender. (pp. 67-97). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
McElhinny, B. (2003). Theorizing Gender in Sociolinguistics and Linguistic Anthropology. In J. Holmes & M. Meyerhoff (Ed.) The Handbook of Language and Gender. (pp. 21-43). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing
Nissen, U. K. (2002). Aspects of Translating Gender. Linguistik Online, 11, 25-37. Retrieved September 2 from: http://www.linguistik-online.de/11_02/nissen.html
Pauwels, A. (2003). Linguistic Sexism and Feminist Linguistic Activism. In J. Holmes & M. Meyerhoff (Ed.) The Handbook of Language and Gender. (pp. 550-70). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Romaine, S. (1999). Communicating Gender. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.
Simon, S. (1996). Gender and Translation. London: Routledge.
