Sep
25

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 participati scholarships for High School seniors on 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).

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