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V. Leonardi Do Men and Women Translate Differently Extract
V. Leonardi Do Men and Women Translate Differently Extract
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which is to prioritize the linguistic make-up of texts. In addition to
analysing linguistic patterns, the function-based approach will also be
taken into account. This focuses on the social and historical aspects of
translation as a product and thus studies the impact of the TT on its own
environment.
1.2 Hypothesis
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1.3 Previous research on ideology and gender in translation
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Robinson states that the activity of translation in the past has been used
as a way ‘to control and educate and generally shape colonized popula-
tions’(1997a:6). Cheyfitz’s interest falls within the category of trans-
lation as a cultural-political channel of imperialism. His study clearly
illustrates the way colonizers made use of ethnographic translation in
order to dominate the colonized population.
Research in the field of gender and translation studies has always
dealt mainly with feminist translations and their role in the field of
translation studies from both a linguistic and an ethical point of view.
Feminist translation theorists engaged in a resistance struggle to fight
against the patriarchal ideology through the activity of translation. Their
translation theory can be divided into three main parts, as also pointed
out by Robinson (1997b). Firstly, writings and research on the need to
recuperate ‘the lost or neglected history of women as translators and
translation theorists’ (ibid.:236); amongst the most influential theorists in
this respect are Krontiris (1992), Robinson (1995) and Simon (1995,
1996). A second group includes attacks on patriarchal ideology and its
influence on ‘mainstream Western translation theory’ (ibid.); Lori
Chamberlain is the most important theorist in this field of research.
Finally, there are studies aimed at establishing an intelligible and solid
feminist translation practice, within which one can mention important
scholars such as Maier (1980, 1984, 1989); Lotbinière-Harwood (1991),
Godard (1983, 1984, 1986, 1990, 1991a, 1991b, 1991c, 1995); Simon
(1995, 1996); Levine (1991); Díaz-Diocaretz (1985); von Flotow (1991,
1997, 1998); Anderson (1995).
Researching in gender studies, I realized that there exist very few
studies which have looked systematically at gender-related differences in
translation, although there have been several investigations into the
differences in language use between males and females. Amongst the
most influential are Thorne and Henley (1975); Thorne, Kramarae and
Henley (1983); Coates (1986); Coates and Cameron (1988); Tannen
(1993, 1994, 1995). These investigations carried out within the field of
sociolinguistics and other related linguistic branches have shown that
women and men speak differently. I intend to determine whether they
also translate differently, perhaps for reasons to be found in the field of
ideology in translation.
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1.4 The present study
This study goes further than previous critiques (listed below) that have
proved, so far, to be unsupported by empirical evidence.
My investigation takes three main issues into account: ideology,
gender, and translation. These three research interests are not completely
disconnected, as they might seem at first. The relationship between them
will be critically discussed in Chapter 2 of this work.
The idea of writing this book was conceived in the light of two
main considerations. First of all, there exist studies on differences in
speech between males and females but no studies have been carried out
so far within the discipline of translation studies in order to explore the
phenomenon of women translated by men and vice versa. There have
been only some criticisms addressed to male translators but they are not
supported by a solid linguistic analysis (Simons, 1983; Lotbinière-
Harwood, 1991; Keefe, 1994; Klaw, 1995; von Flotow, 1997). Secondly,
it was interesting to see how one of these criticisms, the one addressed
against Howard Parshley, the English translator who translated one of
the most influential and militant feminist works, Simone de Beauvoir’s
Le Deuxième Sexe, was not investigated further through empirical
analysis and did not lead to any other study on this topic.
His translation was accused of reflecting a strong ideological posi-
tioning, since he deleted some parts of the chapters and also the names of
seventy-eight important women (Simons, 1983:560). In the second volu-
me Parshley deleted nearly twelve per cent of Beauvoir’s quotations and
in general distorted her texts through significant deletions of important
historical events and mistranslations of some key concepts (ibid.).
1.5 Limitations
One has also to be aware of the limitations of this research. First of all,
the corpus selected (four STs and four TTs) is too small to allow this
study to be exhaustive. Second, it was not possible to compare a TT with
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another version of the same ST since only one translation of each ST has
been carried out. Third, the lack of solid biographical information about
the translators’ lives and professional careers makes it difficult to gain a
deeper insight into their work and competence in translation. Fourth, the
examples used for each analysis have been selected according to their
potential ideological load in their respective contexts. Because of time
and space restrictions I had to select only the most relevant examples to
suit the purpose of my comparative analysis. I had therefore to leave
many other examples unaddressed for the time being.
For these reasons, the results of my contrastive analysis are not
regarded as being universal since they are restricted to my specific model
of analysis, to my language pair and, above all, are based on a small cor-
pus. However, this work is aimed at providing a theoretical framework
for further investigations focusing on the relationship of gender issues
and ideology in the field of translation studies.
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similar future research aimed at covering a broader range of text types
and language pairs. In Part II, the main hypothesis of this study is in-
vestigated by looking at and comparing a selection of Italian prose nar-
ratives and their translation into English. A detailed comparison of the
source and target language versions of four books is performed founded
on the theoretical discussion, the description of ideology in language use
and in translation as well as the description of Italian-English contrasts,
and the linguistic frameworks for analysis worked out in Part I. The re-
sults will show whether the hypothesis formulated above can be verified
at corpus level and whether more differentiated conclusions can be
drawn. Throughout the practical analysis the strategies employed by the
translators, the motivation underlying their choices, and some translation
problems are discussed.
The examples chosen for this analysis will be selected, and interpreted,
on subjective criteria based on the theoretical considerations discussed in
Part I.
In order to facilitate my comparative analysis I have worked out an
analytical model based on a critical contrastive text linguistic approach
(CCTL approach). This approach is organized in four levels of analysis
or types of equivalence in order to ensure that no level of analysis is left
out. The intention is to analyse the text moving from large units such as
paragraphs to smaller units such as individual words.
The texts which have been included in my data analysis have been
selected on the basis of a specific criterion, that is, to evaluate whether
men and women translate differently. As already stated above, both the
examples selected for this analysis and the interpretation of them depend
on the analyst’s subjectivity.
The starting point here is the analysis of the translation of two
feminist Italian novels by English-language translators. However, since
this is to be a comparative analysis, other typologies of translation and
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other elements of comparisons have to be employed in order to draw
more objective conclusions on the translators’ competence and ideologi-
cal positioning. Therefore, taking as the starting point a major feminist
novelist, Dacia Maraini, there will be two different approaches to the
translation of her novels:
DACIA MARAINI
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siderations, 2) geographical considerations, and 3) historical period and
temporal restrictions.
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may therefore interfere with or influence the ST author as well as the
translator.
The reason for choosing Italian and English as the language pair for
my comparative analysis is that I was raised in a bilingual context
(British and Italian) and this allowed me to gain considerable knowledge
of both the English and Italian language and culture. For these reasons, I
feel able to carry out a comparative analysis between these two lan-
guages and cultures. Unfortunately, I have less knowledge of American
culture, although in the past I have carried out research on American fe-
minism.
Both STs and TTs are characteristic of their period and this might be a
‘problem’ from a translation point of view, as I shall explain below.
The two feminist novels that I have chosen to analyse, La vacanza
(1962) and L’età del malessere (1963) by Dacia Maraini, belong to a
particular period in the history of Italian feminism, that is the second
phase as defined by Wood (1995). During this time important rights,
such as abortion and divorce, were finally won and became legal in Italy
and women started to feel more confident about expressing their
sexuality publicly.
Carlo Levi’s memoir Cristo si è fermato a Eboli is concerned with
an important historical period and a specific political regime, that of
Fascism. This memoir was published in 1945 and it combines many
political, religious, magic, and social issues, where the main stress is on
politics.
Teorema was published by Pasolini in 1968, the same year as the
student revolt, and it also combines many different aspects of human life,
always in opposition to one another, such as wealth and poverty or
power and slavery. Religion is the main theme of the novel and is re-
presented in a very controversial way.
Since a translation involves not only transferring a meaning from
one language to another, but also dealing with different cultures in
specific historical periods, temporal restrictions cannot be neglected and
are, to a certain extent, closely bound to the underlying assumptions of
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this study of ideology and gender in translation. By temporal restrictions
I mean the settings of the events and the time of composition as well as
the time of translation. Further explanations and a more detailed analysis
of the historical periods of each of those novels will be dealt with in Part
II, Chapter 5.
The translator has no personal point of view that has any relevance at all to the act
of translation. […] translators, like all professionals, want to take pride in what
they do; if a serious clash between their personal ethics and an externally defined
professional ethics makes it difficult or impossible to feel that pride, they will
eventually be forced to make dramatic decisions about where and under what
conditions they want to work. (1997b:31)
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although linguistics and functionalism are the most important ones. Besi-
des these two main divisions, we can also find a combined model that
takes into account both linguistic-based approaches and functional
models, such as Baker’s model (1992). These models of translation equi-
valences will be further discussed in detail in Chapter 3.6.
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of the chapter I shall examine different theories of equivalence in
translation. These theories are important at this stage because they allow
me to build my own model for comparing STs and TTs. Equivalence can
be used as a tool to assess translations at different linguistic levels. This
chapter also includes a section on the importance of linguistic analysis
for research in the field of translation studies.
Chapter 4 focuses exclusively on my methodology. It is divided
into four levels of analysis or types of equivalence and in each level one
can find a selection of linguistic tools previously mentioned in Chapter
3. The aim of this chapter is to apply the theoretical part of Chapter 3
and to show, after a brief introduction of their major characteristics, how
these features can be used in my comparative analysis of ideology and
gender in translation.
Chapter 5 deals with the presentation of STs and TTs. Some
information about authors and translators will be given. This chapter also
provides some information about the historical context in which STs and
TTs were set as well as information on the main issues and text typology
of the STs.
Chapter 6 deals with Maraini’s first novel, La vacanza (1962), and
its English translation, The Holiday (1966) by Stuart Hood.
Chapter 7 focuses on another feminist novel by Maraini, L’età del
malessere (1963), translated by a female translator, Frances Frenaye, in
the same year.
Chapter 8 offers an analysis of one of Pasolini’s most controversial
writings, Teorema (1968) which was translated by Stuart Hood and
published in 1992.
Chapter 9 explores Carlo Levi’s Cristo si è fermato a Eboli
published in 1945 and translated by Frances Frenaye in 1948.
In Chapter 10 I shall summarize my findings and give my
conclusions. This chapter is divided into six parts: 1) general conclu-
sions, 2) Stuart Hood, 3) Frances Frenaye, 4) similarities between these
two translators, 5) differences between these two translators, and 6) pro-
spects for future research.
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