Abstract
The study aims at introducing new approaches to the strategies and practices of translation from a feminist perspective and to initiate new debates on topics of common interest for translation studies to pave the way for related future studies.
In the past, translation has been considered as a secondary and degraded version of authorship. It appeared as a great instrument for women providing themselves to step into the world of literature and writing. Translation helped women to express themselves through writings and translations for long.
Some researches in the various fields of translation studies have considerably spotlighted the concept of gender and several scholars have investigated this subject. By looking at the history of literatures from the perspective of translation, we cannot turn a blind eye to the significant role of women in the research and translation fields. It is clear that when literature is referred to, women’s contribution has been crystal visible though, in many cases, is still overlooked and their names are often forgotten.
Translation has always been understood as a pattern of rewriting and manipulation of a text, but some feminist writers have gone further, seeing it as a style of writing by the reason of its own right. Female researchers and translators from across the globe: Turkey, Poland, Switzerland, Egypt, Morocco, South Africa and the Netherlands have had their own significant contribution to different aspects in translation studies and activities. Their works have tackled feminist and gender related translation theories to show how translation may contribute to the well-being of women. The translation industry is an example of equal pay problem and recent studies on this subject confirm that translation is among the very few professions that offer equal pay on basis of gender in most of the cases.
Many distinguished and well-known female translators have become visible in the 20th and 21st centuries, there have been and it is impossible to list all of them. The most stimulating theorizing about gender and feminist issues in translation has been advocated by Canadian female writers and scholars: Barbara Godard, Luise von Flotow and Suzanne Jill Levine. The study of gender issues in relation to translation by such Western scholars as Sherry Simon and Louise von Flotow has inspired similar feminist translators in the Arab world which was adopted by Hala Kamal, Randa Abu Bakr and Mona Ibrahim Ali.
Accordingly, the researcher believes that translation should be not be simply subjugated by a specific gender as that strengthens male dominance and oppression of women through the perspective of the gender, a trend that was constructed in the long history with the former being the superior and the latter the inferior gender.
الدكتور عبدالإله نعمة الساعدي | Dr. Abdul-Ilah Niama As-Saadi | 5055