Professor of Translation Studies and translator of German and French literary work. Academic work has focused on gender issues in translation, on how translation is deployed by institutions and governments to market a certain image, and on audiovisual translation (subtitling and dubbing.) As a literary translator, I work mainly on texts by women writers.
Spanish translation of an extract from "Translation", in "21st Century Feminist Theory" ed. Robin... more Spanish translation of an extract from "Translation", in "21st Century Feminist Theory" ed. Robin Truth Goodman, Bloomsbury 2019.
A study of the feminist work of three women translators: Julia E. Smith (mid-19th century USA), E... more A study of the feminist work of three women translators: Julia E. Smith (mid-19th century USA), Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1895 USA), and Mary Phil Korsak (1992 Europe), and their "literal" Bible translations.
Cover of my most recent translation, from German: Thomas Melle's "Die Welt im Ruecken", a literar... more Cover of my most recent translation, from German: Thomas Melle's "Die Welt im Ruecken", a literary auto-fiction and account of the author/narrator's struggle with a severe case of bipolar disorder.
[Re] Gained in Translation. Bibles, Theologies and the Politics of Empowerment. eds. Sabine Dievenkorn and Shaul Levin, Berlin: Frank & Timme 2022, 81-101., 2022
This contribution explores humour as a means of resistance against patriarchal authority in Gerd ... more This contribution explores humour as a means of resistance against patriarchal authority in Gerd Brantenberg’s Egalias døtre (1977), a work of feminist science fiction, and its translation into English by Louis Mackay (1985). In this Norwegian gender-bender, humour serves as a facilitator for critical thinking: the coinage of a playful and subversive matriarchal language undermines and ridicules at once the male-as-norm premise that operates in everyday language. This article reflects on the literary tradition the novel belongs to and the key role of lexical creation in the feminist struggle, before analysing the means and effects of lexical creativity in the source text and its translation, from compounding and neologisms to gender-inverting idioms. The results of this contrastive analysis show that the all-important female-as-norm principle at work in the novel, combined with structural differences between source and target languages, lead the translator to make full use of his creative license. By resorting to compensation as a creative translation strategy to create similar effects throughout the novel, he ensures that the English reader also ends up “laughing at patriarchy”, thereby “[breaking] the rules” of patriarchy (Barr [1989: 90-91]).
The Bloomsbury Handbook of 21st Century Feminist Theory, 2019
Chapter 16. p. 229-243: an overview of the strategies and challenges for feminist translation in ... more Chapter 16. p. 229-243: an overview of the strategies and challenges for feminist translation in the 21st century
In TTR: On the Challenges of Transnational Feminist Translation Studies, 2019
A number of voices have for years been calling for international work in translation studies, and... more A number of voices have for years been calling for international work in translation studies, and this includes feminist translation studies, as will be discussed in this article. Here is one such insistent voice. In her 2009 article arguing for internationalizing translation studies, Maria Tymozcko writes: I do not envision merely increased associations of individuals or groups, good as that is, but a process in which we as scholars, teachers and translators move beyond our enclosed mental worlds to look beyond the boundaries of our own cultures, to see what we can learn conceptually and practically about translation from the world at large. (Tymoczko, 2009, p. 404) "Our enclosed mental worlds" here evokes the traditions and conventions with which Anglo-American/Eurocentric cultures conceptualize translation, and which rule their approaches to translation studies. This article examines the challenges facing attempts to transnationalise translation studies - in feminist ways.
Review of Karen Emmerich’s Literary Translation and the Making of Originals in Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, Dec. 2018, Vol. 45.4, 690-693. , 2018
Por casualidad y otras razones: traduccion y diffusion de la literature, la dramaturgia y el cine de Canada en Latinoamerica, 2018
Introduction to a compilation of articles on Canadian cultural production translated to Latin Am... more Introduction to a compilation of articles on Canadian cultural production translated to Latin America
Routledge Handbook on Audiovisual Translation, 2018
An overview of what academics/researchers have produced so far on the topic of gender in AVT - au... more An overview of what academics/researchers have produced so far on the topic of gender in AVT - audiovisual translation
Tout le monde parle de la pluie et du beau temps. Pas nous, 2018
French translation of Everybody Talks about the Weather. We Don't: a compilation of articles writ... more French translation of Everybody Talks about the Weather. We Don't: a compilation of articles written by Ulrike Meinhof between 1960 and 1969, with an introduction by Karin Bauer, a preface by Elfriede Jelinek.
A first transnational feminist project to bring women's voices in translation studies together - ... more A first transnational feminist project to bring women's voices in translation studies together - from beyond the anglo-american eurozone...
A short excursion into the writings of Ulrike Menhof, their fragmentation, and their re-membering... more A short excursion into the writings of Ulrike Menhof, their fragmentation, and their re-membering through translation.
This paper explores the ways that two transdsiciplines can work together, and benefit from their ... more This paper explores the ways that two transdsiciplines can work together, and benefit from their interdisciplinary roots and approaches for even more fruitful results. While the core of the paper, written by Joan Wallach Scott, focuses on the many difficulties accrued by the Anglo-American concept and term "gender" and hence its translation into and use in other languages and cultures, the frame of that core essay explores the many existing and potential connections between gender studies and translation studies.
Spanish translation of an extract from "Translation", in "21st Century Feminist Theory" ed. Robin... more Spanish translation of an extract from "Translation", in "21st Century Feminist Theory" ed. Robin Truth Goodman, Bloomsbury 2019.
A study of the feminist work of three women translators: Julia E. Smith (mid-19th century USA), E... more A study of the feminist work of three women translators: Julia E. Smith (mid-19th century USA), Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1895 USA), and Mary Phil Korsak (1992 Europe), and their "literal" Bible translations.
Cover of my most recent translation, from German: Thomas Melle's "Die Welt im Ruecken", a literar... more Cover of my most recent translation, from German: Thomas Melle's "Die Welt im Ruecken", a literary auto-fiction and account of the author/narrator's struggle with a severe case of bipolar disorder.
[Re] Gained in Translation. Bibles, Theologies and the Politics of Empowerment. eds. Sabine Dievenkorn and Shaul Levin, Berlin: Frank & Timme 2022, 81-101., 2022
This contribution explores humour as a means of resistance against patriarchal authority in Gerd ... more This contribution explores humour as a means of resistance against patriarchal authority in Gerd Brantenberg’s Egalias døtre (1977), a work of feminist science fiction, and its translation into English by Louis Mackay (1985). In this Norwegian gender-bender, humour serves as a facilitator for critical thinking: the coinage of a playful and subversive matriarchal language undermines and ridicules at once the male-as-norm premise that operates in everyday language. This article reflects on the literary tradition the novel belongs to and the key role of lexical creation in the feminist struggle, before analysing the means and effects of lexical creativity in the source text and its translation, from compounding and neologisms to gender-inverting idioms. The results of this contrastive analysis show that the all-important female-as-norm principle at work in the novel, combined with structural differences between source and target languages, lead the translator to make full use of his creative license. By resorting to compensation as a creative translation strategy to create similar effects throughout the novel, he ensures that the English reader also ends up “laughing at patriarchy”, thereby “[breaking] the rules” of patriarchy (Barr [1989: 90-91]).
The Bloomsbury Handbook of 21st Century Feminist Theory, 2019
Chapter 16. p. 229-243: an overview of the strategies and challenges for feminist translation in ... more Chapter 16. p. 229-243: an overview of the strategies and challenges for feminist translation in the 21st century
In TTR: On the Challenges of Transnational Feminist Translation Studies, 2019
A number of voices have for years been calling for international work in translation studies, and... more A number of voices have for years been calling for international work in translation studies, and this includes feminist translation studies, as will be discussed in this article. Here is one such insistent voice. In her 2009 article arguing for internationalizing translation studies, Maria Tymozcko writes: I do not envision merely increased associations of individuals or groups, good as that is, but a process in which we as scholars, teachers and translators move beyond our enclosed mental worlds to look beyond the boundaries of our own cultures, to see what we can learn conceptually and practically about translation from the world at large. (Tymoczko, 2009, p. 404) "Our enclosed mental worlds" here evokes the traditions and conventions with which Anglo-American/Eurocentric cultures conceptualize translation, and which rule their approaches to translation studies. This article examines the challenges facing attempts to transnationalise translation studies - in feminist ways.
Review of Karen Emmerich’s Literary Translation and the Making of Originals in Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, Dec. 2018, Vol. 45.4, 690-693. , 2018
Por casualidad y otras razones: traduccion y diffusion de la literature, la dramaturgia y el cine de Canada en Latinoamerica, 2018
Introduction to a compilation of articles on Canadian cultural production translated to Latin Am... more Introduction to a compilation of articles on Canadian cultural production translated to Latin America
Routledge Handbook on Audiovisual Translation, 2018
An overview of what academics/researchers have produced so far on the topic of gender in AVT - au... more An overview of what academics/researchers have produced so far on the topic of gender in AVT - audiovisual translation
Tout le monde parle de la pluie et du beau temps. Pas nous, 2018
French translation of Everybody Talks about the Weather. We Don't: a compilation of articles writ... more French translation of Everybody Talks about the Weather. We Don't: a compilation of articles written by Ulrike Meinhof between 1960 and 1969, with an introduction by Karin Bauer, a preface by Elfriede Jelinek.
A first transnational feminist project to bring women's voices in translation studies together - ... more A first transnational feminist project to bring women's voices in translation studies together - from beyond the anglo-american eurozone...
A short excursion into the writings of Ulrike Menhof, their fragmentation, and their re-membering... more A short excursion into the writings of Ulrike Menhof, their fragmentation, and their re-membering through translation.
This paper explores the ways that two transdsiciplines can work together, and benefit from their ... more This paper explores the ways that two transdsiciplines can work together, and benefit from their interdisciplinary roots and approaches for even more fruitful results. While the core of the paper, written by Joan Wallach Scott, focuses on the many difficulties accrued by the Anglo-American concept and term "gender" and hence its translation into and use in other languages and cultures, the frame of that core essay explores the many existing and potential connections between gender studies and translation studies.
Copyright by Luise von Flotow The collection, River in an Ocean (2023)-eleven essays on translati... more Copyright by Luise von Flotow The collection, River in an Ocean (2023)-eleven essays on translation written by women from Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa-develops many different themes: migrancy, life in diaspora, family and heritage languages, and health and well-being for women of colour whose work in translation arises from being uprooted. The authors work with very diverse languages: Arabic, Gujarati and Tamil, Urdu and Kashmiri, Indonesian, African languages Lawino and Runyarwanda, and French. English seems to be the most common target language in the sometimes poetic and very personal accounts of their work. In every case, however, translation evokes migration, the fate of refugees and displaced persons, and diasporic existences for the following generations. The foreword by Françoise Vergès, whose work on decolonial feminism (2021) and on the gap between "western" feminist concerns and the lives of women in the "global south" (2020) sets the tone for these essays, describes her own struggle through languages: the colonial French that displaced the native Creole of Reunion Island, the Arabic and Chinese she tried to learn at school, and the English that became the language of her academic work in the USA. While both the foreword and the essays that follow ascribe an important role to family-the mother's or father's knowledge of the heritage language is often the basis of the translator's expertise and drives an emotional impulse toward that language-international and local politics are also very present: 9/11 mobilized several authors to learn and translate from or into Arabic; the civil war in Sri Lanka is the source of poetry of witness that must be translated for the generations in diaspora; and the chaos and violence caused by uprisings and revolutions "at home" whether in Indonesia, Rwanda, or Palestine have brought translation into these women's lives.
a Canadian identity in a peaceable kingdom of culture. It would have been more consistent with hi... more a Canadian identity in a peaceable kingdom of culture. It would have been more consistent with his critical practice if he had spoken more specifically from his own position as not only professor and publisher but as Englishspeaking Quebecker. Lecker both denies and implies the possibility of discovering a national essence that transcends region and history; his longing that such an essence be given voice by those of us ' who profess Canadian literature rings poignantly through his discussion. The concealing of his own position while emphasizing that of others justifies the :interpretation that he claims to possess that voice. (JULIE BEDDOES)
Prica bezimene turske djevojke o njenom životu i životu njene obitelji u nekoliko turskih gradova... more Prica bezimene turske djevojke o njenom životu i životu njene obitelji u nekoliko turskih gradova (Malatya, Istanbul, Bursa, Yenisehir) do njene osamnaeste godine, kad odlazi na rad u Njemacku. Opisuje se povijesno razdoblje od posljednjih desetljeca Osmanskog Carstva do druge polovice sezdesetih godina 20. stoljeca.
Subtitling and audiovisual translation (AVT) in general, as language practices, play a crucial ro... more Subtitling and audiovisual translation (AVT) in general, as language practices, play a crucial role in shaping social imaginary and contributing to the construction of identities. But far too little attention has been paid to the translation of documentaries, especially those produced in the so-called “global” South and translated into other languages, such as English. Therefore, this paper aims to gain a further understanding of translating documentaries, particularly looking at subtitles from a transnational perspective intertwining translation and feminist studies. We will elaborate on the importance of translators’ careful listening as a critical factor in the translation of documentaries produced based on personal narratives. The object of analysis comprises excerpts of subtitles, audio recordings, and frames extracted from Brazilian documentaries chronicling the lives and work experiences of waste pickers (including poor, Black women) set in contexts of extreme poverty. The re...
This paper studies 'literal' translation of Bible texts by three anglophone women: Julia Evelina ... more This paper studies 'literal' translation of Bible texts by three anglophone women: Julia Evelina Smith, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Mary Phil Korsak. It refers to the work of Antoine Berman on translation and commentary as a theoretical basis.
This paper studies the humour in feminist linguistic creativity and experimentation: where does t... more This paper studies the humour in feminist linguistic creativity and experimentation: where does the humour lie? Does it work in translation?
'Global English' is often cited as a notorious neo-colonial, hegemonic threat to other cultures, ... more 'Global English' is often cited as a notorious neo-colonial, hegemonic threat to other cultures, languages and the circulation of ideas. However, it seems unavoidable in transnational political work. Is it? This article engages with this and other challenges in regard to transnational feminist translation studies.
This book starts from one main premise: a literary translation makes an original. This is bolster... more This book starts from one main premise: a literary translation makes an original. This is bolstered with a series of related ideas that are fleshed out in five interesting and detailed case studies, further cementing the argument that literary translation does not first and foremost transfer meaning or produce equivalence but stabilizes an unstable original. Karen Emmerich's argument runs counter to the conventional notions about source texts and target texts that have largely framed Anglo-American/European work in academic Translation Studies over the past half-century, and that underlie most non-academic ideas about translation as well – at least in the Anglo-American Eurozone. She states point blank that the binary view of source and target texts and the expectation of " equivalence " and " faithfulness " this brings with it, always condemn translation, to failure and to accusations of " loss " if not treachery.
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Books by Luise von Flotow
This article examines the challenges facing attempts to transnationalise translation studies - in feminist ways.
This article examines the challenges facing attempts to transnationalise translation studies - in feminist ways.