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... novel as a genre is. The book by Luise von Flotow's k is meant to popularize the achievements of a relatively young discipline situated on the intersection translation studies. The author manages to unfold a complex argument about the impact of gender on translation practice, history, and theory over the last thirty years.
The gender was brought into academic discussions and redefined language as a powerful political tool. The writings of feminists add the translators politicizing and initiated a wave of new translation practices, including translating the body, cultural puns, and word play, accentuating the presence of such subject as the feminist translating; and recovering women's writing lost in patriarchy. The target of feminist translation is viewed as rewriting in the feminine, which makes women visible in language. Theories of translation reveal the increasing gender awareness, which draws attention to the trace of the translator's gendered agency in the text.
This often takes the form of annotations or critical commentaries that accompany the translation. The theorists of this approach emphasize questions on the politics of language and cultural difference as well as the ethics of translation. They revise the traditional metaphors and re-interpret the translation myths, such as the Tower of Babel and Pandora's box. The author mentions interesting comparative studies of existing translations that lead to feminist rewriting's of standard texts. The author usefully summarizes possibilities of further research on gender and translation, from the historical-comparative to contemporary perspectives on the production and reception of texts. In the authors perspective on gender and translation the problems of race, ethnicity, class, even sexuality, are barely touched upon as part of power dynamics in cross-cultural translation.
The author is determined to abide by gender as a major category of feminist analysis, the category that for her seems to be fractured only by differences of nationality, language, and culture among Western women. The book Translation and Gender by von Flotow's delivers on its promise of a concise and comprehensive introduction to feminist approaches to translation and gives a review of unpublished conference materials and asking provocative questions about feminist translation strategies. Nonetheless, if a closer look is taken in the knowledge and interpreting strategy, it is the reader who interacts with the textual form and produces a certain response to the reading. Here, the main idea would be not merely the translation stylistic features, content, function, or even meaning. The combination of gender and translation is a greatly productive and stimulating area of research that takes people into many areas, such as: historical studies, theoretical considerations, issues of identity, post-colonial questions and more general questions of cultural transfer. And there is as also evidently much room for work in the field of gender and translation - in other languages.
Though, that there was some controversy in this discussion. Despite all its elements a text cannot be divided into such discrete components. They cannot be set apart from the organic body of the source text to be preserved into the target text. The idea is already conditioned within the text, in a form that allows the reader himself to bring it out. The answer to the feminism gender would be that it is as accurate and faithful as possible to the source text. On the other hand, many theorists indicate gender issues in the work of translation in a culture where hundreds, probably thousands, of books are translated each year, and hundreds of people, among them many women.
This is the sign that points to the productive aspects of the field. This also is a very sad sign, which points out the immense power sometimes invested in the control of language and the vulnerability of those who work with language. In moments of repression, fear, or simply power struggles, language use is one site where insidious types of control are exercised. A good example would be a discussion of Jerome's Bible translation, known as the Vulgate, which was done in the fourth century. Educated multilingual and multicultural Roman, Jerome set out to translate directly from the original languages, mostly Hebrew and Greek, and make a Latin version of the Bible that would correct the flaws of the existing Greek translation from which existing Latin translations was done. However, this translation was suspiciously seen to Augustine, who feared that a new translation would threaten the ideological coherence and institutional stability of the early Church.
A new Latin text could cause the "Latin churches to be out of step with the Greek, because the text of Latin churches would differ. Augustine was greatly interested in one strong church, not in various sects that would use different versions of the texts. The same can be observed today, the Vatican controls the English gender-sensitive translations " of Biblical texts by the International Commission on English in the Liturgy, and it "assumes a particular gravity" because the impact of English on other language groups is "an observed and unavoidable fact." It is possible, that like Jerome's new Latin version of the Bible was a potential threat to Church unity and stability, the English-based gender ideology and gender-sensitive language is now a possible threat to Catholic church coherence and stability. English can influence other languages and other translations of the Bible could be done. The Vatican fears that it might cause havoc in other areas of Church control. Nonetheless, nowadays the Vatican insists that there is nothing in the church's sacred texts that would allow prejudice or discrimination on the basis of gender or race.
Everything depends on the "right interpretation" which is the responsibility of the catechist or the homilist - not the translator, or the translating committee. The problem of translating such words, like, for example, queer, reminds the discussions over transnational feminist ideas. The analysis of the comparative work on the translations of gay texts in England and France shows how differently the traditions of writing and identity play themselves out in these cultures, and how those same traditions affect the translations. English translations of French texts use the word gay, thus, adding in to it the aggressiveness of in your face gay. The French translations of English queer texts downplay the gay theme.
In this example of translation, can be seen the much larger socio-cultural attitude with regard to issues of subcultural identity and community, attitudes which form part of the complex context within which the translator acts. Such subcultural notions are traditionally underlined in English socio-cultural thinking and political activism, but diminished in France as a consequence of a universalizing notion of subjectivity. In fine comparative literary analyses all kinds of aspects of queer seem not be translated because of divergent cultural histories and affiliations. Luise von Flotow highlights the connection between positivist English philology of and European imperialism, with philological translation being the colonization of the past, and she demonstrates how this principle has often done disservice to early Irish texts. Before using any method of inquiry to examine the text, must be addressed the question of why approach this text as translated text? Translation, as a mode through which readers understand text is necessarily of great importance.
Too often the translated text is lacking the favor of the content of the work itself, without consideration of the possibility that content is shaped. The influence of popular texts on the history and development of philosophy is enormous. The problem of translation in terms with the source text is manifold, and openly admitted by the translators. The methodology of the translators is clearly outlined. They claim that the ideal translation would with reasonable linguistic competence and a key to the translators conventions, ability to retranslate the new version into the very words of the original.
The idea of performing translation with some ideal reader in mind is criticized by various linguists, but some translators do admit the impossibility of an "ideal" reader and point to the various "devices" they have employed to fill this lack. The suggested ones have been the linguistic properties, meaning, author's intention, function, purpose, reader's response, and so forth of the original text. The goals of the translation depend on the idea, which has to be remained in the process. The readers response is the best answer to perspectives in the study of translation in the communicative and cognitive frame of reference. Much research is being done and cognitive psychology on the representation system of the reader's knowledge in interaction with the text, which allows a scientific description of the reader's response in translation quality assessment. The main target of the translation is the preservation of the idea or possible reconstruction of the source linguistic means and forms text through the correspondent forms of the target text.
A cognitive approach synthesizes all the aspects and elements of the discourse in terms of the reader's knowledge and inference strategy in opposition to the componential analysis of discourse studies rooted on the traditional semiotic communication model. The text should have not the objective structure; it should take a structure that can be completed by the reader. In connection with translation, the reader's response may well be the most relevant criterion for representing the identity and the characteristic of the text to be preserved into a second language as well. Hence the target text would be compared to the source text in terms of the reader's response, and with this orientation the target text readership would be expected to perceive the intended message via the text and even to experience the similar cognition change throughout the reading process as the original readership work out the source text. This model of dynamic interactive equivalence is a criterion that supports the quality of equivalence.
It forms various themes and plans, as well as proper scripts, to be recognized by the target audience for the text to function as a coherent communicative act rather than as a superfluous or meaningless text. Being the agent of the original and the target cultures, the translator should be well aware of the typical assumptions of the original readers, namely types of different common scheme levels triggered by the original text in the average source text readers. Keeping in mind the responses of the original readership, the translator's task then is to find out the most appropriate frame, use the correspondent linguistic forms to convey such reactions through the target text. Bibliography: Bakhtin, M. M. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays.
Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981. Barnstone, W. The Poetics of Translation. New Haven: Yale UP, 1993 Berman, A.
The Experience of the Foreign. Albany: State U of New York P, 1992. Gentler, Edwin. Contemporary Translation Theories. London and New York: Routledge, 1993.
Kelly, Louis. The True Interpreter: A History of Translation Theory and Practice in the West. New York: St. Martin's P, 1979. Rodriguez, M.
A. The Knowledge of the Translator. Montesinos, 2000. Simon, Sherry.
Gender in Translation: Cultural Identity and the Politics of Transmission. London and New York: Routledge, 1996 Schulte, R, . Biguenet, J. Theories of Translation: An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida. University of Chicago Press, 1992. Von Flotow, L.
Translation and Gender: Translating in the "Era of Feminism." St. Jerome Publishing and University of Ottawa Press, 1997.
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Research essay sample on Socio Cultural Reader Response
