Translation Trouble: Gender Indeterminacy in English Novels and their French Versions
2010; Edinburgh University Press; Volume: 19; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.3366/e0968136109000776
ISSN1750-0214
Autores Tópico(s)Gender Studies in Language
ResumoIn English literature, characters of indeterminate sex created by novelists range from the ambi-gendered narrators in Victorian novels to the protagonists of Virginia Woolf's Orlando, Brigid Brophy's In Transit, Angela Carter's The Passion of New Eve, and Jeanette Winterson's Written on the Body. A unique experiment in French is Anne Garréta's Sphinx. Translating such texts from one language into the other is a challenge; different strategies of ‘degendering’ have to be used in Germanic and Romance languages respectively. This essay discusses examples of translations which successfully preserve gender indeterminacy, but also translations which ignore authorial intentions and reintroduce gender markings. Typical strategies are observed as well as imaginative solutions for special situations.
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