Translation in the feminine: Theory, commitment and (good) praxis

Abstract

The gap between translation theory and practice can be narrowed by means of translators' selfreflections on their practice, although they need to acknowledge the specificity of their standpoint and avoid speaking from a transcendent position. This article engages in such selfreflective practice in order to denounce the strategies of stigmatization of feminist translation in the patriarchal defense of national culture and literary tradition. The nascent translation industry in Galicia is still marred by a bad praxis that exposes the power imbalance among the various actors involved in the translation process. Also, the introduction of the gender variable in the debate around the tensions between professional translators and amateurs reveals interesting loci of alternative practices. A plurality of translation actors, each of them enjoying some relative autonomy regarding their audience and objectives, seems more appropriate than a translation industry controlled by one, no matter how enlightened, single caucus. Introduction. Feminist translation: anxiety and resistanceOver twenty years ago, Barbara Godard (1988) encouraged translators to reflect publicly on their experience and on the principles that sustained it (p. 51). The goal of this self-reflective strategy was to put an end to the process of concealment which, from a variety of institutions, successfully pursued to minimize the public relevance of the translator's intervention. For this reason, I have always tried to follow Godard's recommendation and have accompanied my translations with this self-reflective exercise with the aim of bringing theoretical proposals and translation practice more closely-especially since the latter is often perceived as lagging behind (Arrojo, 1998; Castro, 2010, pp. 465-468). However, I would not like to privilege theoretical debate, because theory and practice should definitely inform each other, even if they do not seem to keep the same pace. It is by now widely acknowledged that theory necessarily underlies all translation practice, even when translation actors seem unaware of its doing so (Wagner & Chesterman, 2002), but theory is not an unquestionable source of wisdom that practice merely illustrates. Consequently, we should strive to find out the ways in which practice can inform and, if necessary, interrogate theoretical tenets.

Womanhandling Ibsen’s A Doll’s House: Feminist Translation Strategies in a Spanish Translation from 1917

“…Recent collections have sought to widen the field while dispelling the notion of feminist translation as a purely Western phenomenon (von Flotow and Farahzad 2017) and also advocating for embracing the "F-word" and its political implication (Castro and Ergun 2017: 3). In Spain there has been a steady interest in the field in the past few years (Castro 2009;Brufau Alvira 2011;Palacios 2014;Bengoechea 2014) with particularly branching into the study of Spanish feminist translators in history (Castro 2010;Simón Palmer 2010;Sánchez 2014;Romero López 2016), as the present study attempts. That last line of research pursues the feminist foremother metaphor, that in translation meant rescuing the lost voices of the translatresses (Simon 1996: 45), that is, women intellectuals "whose work unjustifiably lapsed into oblivion" (von Flotow 2005: 43) and analyzing to what extent they left a conscious handprint in their translations.…”

Women Moving Across Cultures: The Representation of Zahra’s Character in the English Version of Hanan Al-Shaykh’s The Story of Zahra

“…Different approaches later emerged beyond Canada taking into account the sociopolitical and linguistic specificities of other local and national contexts. Scholars such as Massardier-Kenney (1997), Wallmach (2006), andPalacios (2014) proposed more contemporary strategies departing from the Canadian school towards a multidisciplinary discourse on feminist translation. This led to the development of transnational and intersectional approach to feminist translation.…”

Autotraducción Y Feminismo Transnacional: Una Propuesta De Análisis De Dove Mi Trovo Y Whereabouts De Jhumpa Lahiri

“…De hecho, como destaca Santaemilia, la traducción ayuda a «(re) pensar los límites y las potencialidades de la igualdad sexual» (2013: 3). Siguiendo las líneas que exploran el binomio de traducción y género (entre otras : Castro, 2008;Brufau, 2010;Federici y Leonardi, 2013;Palacios, 2014;Castro y Ergun, 2018;Castro y Spoturno, 2020), al que se le añade también el tercer factor del poscolonialismo (Sales, 2006;Rodríguez Murphy, 2015), nos proponemos aquí analizar la obra de Lahiri desde una perspectiva no solo translingüística, como es la de Kellman, quien afirma que «Lahiri's translingual embrace of Italian is willful and risky» (2019: 342), sino también transcultural y transnacional (Stoican, 2018;Sales, 2013) y, en concreto, a través del enfoque de la traductología feminista (Castro y Spoturno, 2020). Se trata de una perspectiva de estudio que entrelaza, por un lado, el feminismo transnacional -es decir, la conveniencia y la posibilidad de una solidaridad política de las feministas de todo el mundo que trasciende la clase, la raza, la sexualidad y las fronteras nacionales (Mendoza, 2002: 296, citado en Castro et al, 2020 3)-y, por otro, la traductología feminista, algo que es al mismo tiempo «perturbing and interesting» (Flotow, 2019: 229) y que definimos siguiendo a Castro y Spoturno (2020: 13) como la aplicación de una perspectiva feminista sobre la traducción con un fuerte cariz político e ideológico.…”