Rosemary Arrojo - Fidelity and the Gendered Translation(1).pdf - Gender in Translation - cli

Fidelity and The Gendered

Translation 1

Rosemary Arrojo

Feminism comes to be defined here almost inadvertently, as

a bond of reading: a bond of reading that engenders, in

some ways, the writer — leads to her full assumption of her

sexual difference: a bond of reading and of writing which,

however, paradoxically precedes knowing what it means to

"read as a woman," since this very bond, this very reading,

is precisely constituted by the recognition that the question

"what is a woman?" has not yet been answered and defies,

in fact, all given answers.

What Does a Woman Want? Reading and Sexual

Difference, Shoshana Felman

While tradition has generally viewed translation as a transparent,

impersonal activity which is expected to recover — and to be blindly

faithful to — the supposedly stable meanings of an author,

contemporary, postmodern theories of language are beginning to

A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the

conference "Woman, Text, Image," sponsored by the Department

of Romance Languages and Literatures, Binghamton University,

New York, U.S.A., on April 16, 1994. It is part of a research

project sponsored by CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento

de Pessoal de Nível Superior), of the Brazilian Ministry of

Education and conducted at the Department of Comparative

Literature of Yale University from October of 1993 to September

of 1994.1 thank my colleague Paulo Ottoni for his help with the

French version of my abstract.

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recognize the inevitable echoes of the translator's voice in the

translated text. At the same time, an increasing awareness of the

impact of gendered related issues to the production of meaning and

knowledge is beginning to encourage a promising union between

feminism, postmodernism, and the emerging discipline of translation

studies. An outstanding example of such a union can be found in

Lori Chamberlain's often quoted essay on "gender and the

metaphorics of translation" which has called our attention to the

implications of the traditional, "masculine" opposition between

productive and reproductive work for the ways in which patriarchal

culture views translators and their work, at the same time that it has

allowed us to examine "what is at stake for gender in the

representation of translation: the struggle for authority and the

politics of originality informing this struggle" (1988, p. 455). The

"sexualization of translation" appears, for instance, in an exemplary

fashion, in the well-known tag les belles infidèles: "like women, the

adage goes, translations should be either beautiful or faithful." Such

a tag, argues Chamberlain, "owes its longevity" mainly to the fact

that it "has captured a cultural complicity between the issues of

fidelity in translation and in marriage":

For les belles infidèles, fidelity is defined by an implicit contract

between translation (as woman) and original (as husband, father,

or author). However, the infamous "double standard" operates here

as it might have in traditional marriages: the "unfaithful"

wife/translation is publicly tried for crimes the husband/original is

by law incapable of committing. This contract, in short, makes it

impossible for the original to be guilty of infidelity. Such an

attitude betrays real anxiety about the problem of paternity and

translation; it mimics the patrilineal kinship system where

paternity — not maternity legitimizes an offspring. (1988, pp. 455-

456)

As the authorial role of the translator is recognized, as

"reproduction" is conceived to be in fact a form of "production,"

and as the traditional opposition between the so-called "original" and

its translation is deconstructed, the "struggle for authority" that takes

place in any form of reading necessarily entails a revision of our

familiar conceptions of fidelity owed to the "original." From such

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a perspective, the main goal of this paper is to examine the views on

fidelity and on the relationships that can be established between

"original" and translation as expressed by some female translators

who share not only an awareness of their gendered voices but,

mainly, of the political responsibilities associated to such voices. As

they reflect on their own work and defend their active,

interventionist role in the translations they do, they also seem to

claim some form of allegiance to the traditional maxim of

translation ethics which prescribes the protection of the author's (or

the text's) original meaning at all costs. In the defense of their

authorial role in the production of meaning that constitutes their

work of translation, such female translators seem to fall into another

version of the same "infamous double standard" that can be found

in our traditional, "masculine" theories and conceptions of

translation. In such a context, which seems to repeat some of the

basic contradictions that often haunt the contemporary reflection on

gender inspired by postmodernism, I shall propose to answer a basic

question: since it does not seem to be theoretically coherent to

reconcile the awareness of the translator's "audible" voice in the

translated text with the traditional notion of fidelity allegedly owed

to the "original," what kind of ethics could we envision for the

consciously gendered translation? What kind of "fidelity" can the

politically minded, feminist translator claim to offer to the authors

or texts she translates and deconstructs?

The recognition of translation as a form of écriture, as a

production rather than a mere recovery of someone else's meaning,

which we owe to postmodern theories of language, is a key factor

for politically active, feminist translators. While traditionally

regarded as marginal and secondary, in the wake of contemporary

theories of knowledge and culture, both women's and translation

issues have become "tools" for a critical understanding of language

and, when combined, "form the basis for a new and exciting

poetics," as David Homel and Sherry Simon point out (1988, p. 43).

A poetics, however, which is also a political practice. This

productive, "visible" translator does not alienate her work from her

convictions and her activism and, quite on the contrary, takes on an

explicitly authorial role. As Luise von Flotow observes, "the modest,

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self-effacing translator who produces a smooth, readable target

language version of the original has become a thing of the past"

(1991, p. 76) 2 . For Barbara Godard, the notion of translation as

production "is at odds with the long-dominant theory of translation

as equivalence and transparency which describes the translator as an

invisible hand mechanically turning the words of one language into

another" (Homel and Simon, 1988, p. 50). According to Susanne de

Lotbinière-Harwood(1990), "making the feminine subject visible in

language is an important way of putting feminist politics into

practice," and since "language cannot be neutral," she is aware of

the fact that her "woman-centred focus guides and frames her

translation work":

as a feminist translator, my choices — of words, of works to take

on — are informed by the emerging women's culture, which

means that our references can now be found within the sphere of

work done by women. We have a feminist dictionary, an

encyclopedia, theoretical works, fiction, criticism, translations,

prefaces to translations — all of these are beginning to constitute

a women's culture, (pp. 43-44)

As Barbara Godard theorizes, in feminist translation, "difference" is

no longer "a negative term," and translation becomes what she calls

a "transformance":

The recognition of the translator's "visibility" in the texts she or

he translates is one of the most important consequences of a

reflection on translation and on reading inspired by postmodernist

theories of language which have questioned the possibility of any

simple, recoverable origin. Jacques Derrida's "deconstruction" has

been particularly efficient in revising the ways tradition has

always confined translation to a plot of failure and impossibility.

Derrida explicitly addresses the theoretical issues posed by

translation in texts such as The Ear of the Other, "Living

on/Border Lines" and "Des Tours de Babel." For a more specific

discussion about the question of the translator's visibility itself,

see also Arrojo (1993) and Venuti (1986).

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Like parody, feminist translation is difference despite similarity.

As feminist theory tries to show, difference is a key factor in

thought processes and in critical activity. The feminist translator

affirming her critical difference, her delight in interminable re-

reading and re-writing, flaunts the signs of her manipulation of the

text. Womanhandling the text in translation means replacing the

modest, self-effacing translator. The translator becomes an active

participant in the creation of meaning, (p. 15)

In a similar manner, Suzanne Jill Levine associates her work as a

translator to what she considers to be Julia Kristeva's option for

"woman's dissidence, for feminine subversion as a process of

becoming." In her translation practice, Levine opts for "subersive"

strategies particularly when translating Guillermo Cabrera Infante's

sexist novel La habana para un infante difunto, which, in her own

words, not only "mocks" and "manipulates" "women and their

words," but which is also "unabashedly pronographic" and

"explicitly" exposes "the sterility of the archetypal relationship

between man and woman":

Like the mythic Narcissus who rejects Echo's caresses, this

modern Narcissus [Infante] only wishes to listen to his Echo. [...]

The narrator is a supremely solitary figure, like the pavo real, the

peacock from which the pavane, a courtly and often solo dance,

originates. He is enclosed in his book, in his lonely hall of mirrors

like King Christophe; the greatest moment of love, or, rather,

orgasm, he experiences, as he says, is through masturbation.

(1983, pp. 91-92)

"Where does this leave a woman as translator of such a book? Is she

not a double betrayer, to play Echo to this Narcissus, repeating the

archetype once again?" asks Levine. The answer she offers us is the

conviction that her only alternative is to become a traduttora

traditora: "because of what is lost and can be gained in crossing the

language barrier, because of the inevitable rereading that occurs in

transposing a text from one context to another, a translation must

subvert the original" (p. 92).

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