Tick as Appropriate: (A) Gay, (B) Queer, or (C) None of the Above: Translation and Sexual Politics in Lawrence Venuti’s A Hundred Strokes of the Brush Before Bed

This article focuses on Lawrence Venuti’s English translation of Cento colpi di spazzola prima di andare a dormire (2003) and in particular on the representation of a queer character in the text. To understand the ethical implications of translating representations and constructions of “gay identity” today, attention needs to be paid to the translation and global circulation of American popular culture and particularly, to an emerging politic of “homonormativity” in mainstream U.S. gay cultural production. In the case of Venuti’s translation, as a result of a series of translation choices, a character who articulates an ambiguous and contradictory sexual and gender identity in the source text becomes, in the target text, more clearly coded as “homonormative.” The article argues that in the field of translation studies greater attention needs to be paid to articulations of queerness coming from non-English-speaking cultures and how these get rewritten and manipulated when translated into English.