Who are you, who are we in A Room of One’s Own? The difference that sexual difference makes in Borges’ and Rivera-Garretas’s translations of Virginia Woolf’s essay

Abstract

In this article, the author compares two Spanish translations of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own. Taking into account that Spanish is a language in which words referring to human beings have a feminine and a masculine form, and grammatical gender corresponds to sex, all translators must interrogate the sex of the referent in order to translate gendered words. They are thus compelled to assign sex to genderless forms in the source text. Patriarchal translation has a long tradition of devaluing and excluding the feminine in this process, as the author demonstrates here by revealing how Jorge Luis Borges translated the pronouns you and we in Woolf's essay. In contrast, in her feminist translation of the essay, María Milagros Rivera-Garretas not only chooses the gender which most accurately represents the likely intended meaning of the source text, but recovers its message and legacy.

Interaction Between Gender and Translation (1995-2022): A Systematic Literature Review

“… Feminist and Patriarchal Ideologies. The literature demonstrates that the role of translators' feminist and patriarchal ideologies in translation was consistent across all the selected studies (Bengoechea, 2011;Hassen, 2011;Tolliver, 2002). Patriarchal ideology drove patriarchal translations through debasing and excluding femininity (Bengoechea, 2011) or through covert sexism (Orozco, 2013) in the translation process.…”

“…The literature demonstrates that the role of translators' feminist and patriarchal ideologies in translation was consistent across all the selected studies (Bengoechea, 2011;Hassen, 2011;Tolliver, 2002). Patriarchal ideology drove patriarchal translations through debasing and excluding femininity (Bengoechea, 2011) or through covert sexism (Orozco, 2013) in the translation process. On the other hand, feminist ideology influenced feminist translations by manipulating the texts written by female authors for feminist goals (Castro, 2013).…”

“…Feminist and patriarchal ideologies affected translation differently S.-B. Lee, 2020, Hartman, 1999, Orozco, 2013, Hassen, 2011, Bengoechea, 2011, Tolliver, 2002 Feminist translators actively intervened the original texts through translation in a feminist approach Bessaïh, 2021, Woods, 2011, Yoon, 2021, Sánchez, 2011, Muñiz, 2018, Palacios-González, 2008, Castro, 2013, Hassen, 2020 Cultural gender conventions Translation complied with the assumed gender beliefs and values of the intended audience Feral, 2011, Wang et al, 2020 Socio-cultural and ideological factors influenced the translation Karoubi, 2013, Tsai, 2022, Leonardi and Taronna, 2011 The Impact of Translation on Gender Gender (stereotypical) portrayals of fictional characters Translation decisions affected how female characters were portrayed Herná ndez Socas et al, 2022, Zeven & Dorst, 2021, Bazzi, 2022, Ranzato, 2020 Gender stereotypes were perpetuated, reproduced, altered, reinforced, or tempered through translation Zeven and Dorst, 2021, Liu, 2015, Vera, 2012, De Marco, 2006, Bianchi, 2018, Wang et al, 2020Tang, 2022, Williams, 2022, Dong, 2022 Gendered language and meanings Translation affected the language of the characters Inoue, 2003, Furukawa, 2012…”