challenging grammatical gender2

7/29/2019 Challenging Grammatical Gender2

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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!

challenging grammatical gender2

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