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R
esistancy is the translation practice of breaking
with the target language's norms. A translation
strategy based on an aesthetic of discontinuity, it
has been used in the translation of experimental source
texts to create a target text that is as innovative as the
original. Venuti identifies this strategy as a means of
letting the readers know that they are reading a
translation, preserving a difference, an "otherness, by
reminding the reader of the gains and losses in the
translation process".
1
Resistancy makes the
translation visible "through linguistic means that
have a defamiliarising effect and that work
against easy fluency".
2
It has also been used
by feminist translators to find experimental
solutions to translation issues and to
achieve the main goals of feminist
translation.
Feminist Translation Studies started
in Quebec in the late 1970s in order
to investigate the links between
translation and gender. Among
its pioneers were Luise von
Flotow, Susanne de Lotbinière-
Harwood and Sherry Simon in
Canada; Suzanne Jill Levine,
Carol Maier and Françoise
Massardier-Kenney in
North America; and then
José Santaemilia in
Europe. As Lotbinière-
Harwood observed, for
the feminist translator the
principal goal is to make
the feminine (i.e. women)
visible in the text. For
Simon, feminist translations
"will necessarily upset traditional
vocabularies of domination" and "provoke
the emergence of new meanings".
3
ElettraTsikoudis defends her decision to subvert standard Italian
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