Translation and Gender: Translating in the 'Era of Feminism'

5. Criticisms

5. Criticisms The criticisms that have been addressed to feminist approaches to translation and translation studies can be divided into two general types: those that reflect positions outside feminism and favour an 'objective' approach to scholarship and writing, and those that come from within the widening boundaries of feminism and support the view that gender makes a critical difference. The criticisms uttered within a feminist ethics are of particular interest since they advance the discussion, raising new issues , adding diversity, and generally rendering feminist work on translation more complex. They challenge positions, foster debate within feminism and engage with other less politically-motivated analytical and practical work on translation. Criticism from Outside Feminisms Despite a substantial body of work on gender as a category that affects human experience, and therefore human knowledge, scholarly work based on notions of'universality' or 'objectivity' is still being produced. This type of scholarship is in itself a form of criticism of feminist or 'inclusive' work since it both ignores contemporary developments and hampers their reception. Especially in those cultures where the women's movement has developed less influence than in the Anglo-American academic sphere, this type of critical response has a number of negative consequences. In such an academic climate, interest in gender can be labelled as unscholarly and threaten a career to the extent that feminist work ceases to be produced. Or, work that addresses gender issues may not be published or disseminated, and thus not trigger discussion, controversy or new ideas. Scholars who continue to work in this area may be marginalized and rendered uncertain, a handicap in the formulation and presentation of innovative insights. Such responses to gender-conscious scholarship mayjustify themselves on the grounds that gender issues are too emotional, too partisan, too ideological, in fact, too subjective for real scholarship. Yetthis view harks back to notions of objectivity, which as feminist work has not tired of showing, do not even exist within feminisms, and may at most apply to the basic human needs of communication, food and shelter. A more serious response to feminist initiativesin Bible translation is developed in a short text by Eugene Nida (1995), which raises the issue of 'gender neutrality'. According to this view, work that highlights socio77 Translation and Gender cultural or political inequalitiesand ascribes them to gender difference seeks to achieve gender neutrality. Since, however, most living creatures , the argument goes, are of either female or male sex, "there are no cognitive models to form a basis for understanding such gender neutrality " (Nida 1995). Biological sexual difference is thus seen to make gender a given that must be recognized and expressed in language, and that cannot be linguisticallytransgressed. Social change can be made solely on the sociopolitical level, with each society or group adjusting its cultural practices to remedy an untenablesituation. This argument is directed against language reform, one of the foundations of feminist activity.In this case, Nida argues that 'inclusive' language in Bible translations is "no really valid solution to the issue of gender neutrality" (ibid), claiming that only radical change within the group (here, the Christian church) will lead to changes in the inequitable roles assigned to women and men in the church. Yetthis begs the question about how isolated or complacent and conservative groups find out about other ways of being or seeing if they do not have access to new language. How do such groups even come to realize that when a term such as 'Father' is used to denote the powerful spiritual benevolence assigned to the Christian god this is a reflection of its own patriarchal bias, and further strengthens it. Moreover, it is doubtful whether feminist work actually seeks to establish gender neutrality. This seems to be more of an argumentative move 'from outside feminism' than a feminist goal. A rather flippant response might take the term androgyny as an example: it presently refers to the union of the physical characteristics of both sexes in one being, a union that could be taken as a form of gender neutrality. However , the fact that 'andro' (the 'male' part of the word) comes first should raise serious doubts about the 'neutral' aspects of the word and the condition. Another type of criticism levelled against gender-conscious translation addresses the various kinds of metatexts that accompany translations of experimental work and the numerous anthologies of women's writing. These are seen as superfluous 'noise' that distracts from the actual text. Such criticisms presumably support the view that a...