10 The Linguist Vol/58 No/4 2019
ciol.org.uk/tl
FEATURES
correct communication of information",
5
according to
Nida and Taber. The effect Palmer desired was cognitive
estrangement,
so my approach to gender in the
translation had to be as experimental as the approach in
the source text. It's here that resistancy comes into play.
Since the source text presented unconventional
typographical symbols to express meaning (for example,
? ¿ to indicate speech in Spanish and「」to indicate
speech in Japanese), I decided to follow Palmer's
example and experiment with other typographical
symbols. In Italian, most words end with vowels,
therefore I choose to use the schwa /ǝ/
from the IPA
alphabet for the singular, and the open-mid front
rounded vowel /œ/ for the plural. I used these
typographical symbols coherently in articles, nouns,
adjectives and verbs.
'Commissioner General Papadelias' became lǝ
Commissariǝ Generale Papadelias, and "a safe,
unfamous bash, all Cousins, mostly teachers plus a
masseur, two mural painters and an oboist" became na
bash sicura, nella norma, tuttœ Cuginœ di cui la
maggior parte insegnanti più unǝ
massaggiatorǝ, due
affrescatorœ e unǝ
oboistǝ. In both examples, the use of
/ǝ/
and /œ/ allowed me to avoid choosing the gender
of the referents or to use the standard masculine, which
conceals the possibility that any of the referents may be
female. To help the reader understand the innovative
translation, I decided to counterbalance this radical
solution with a number of more traditional strategies,
such as paraphrase, omission and modulation, which
aimed to improve the readability of the target text.
This
is just one example of the productivity of the
resistancy strategy, which empowers translators and
gives us a useful tool to express our creativity with an
agency similar to the one usually reserved for authors.
This can be particularly helpful in finding creative
solutions to the challenging translation issues often
presented by sci-fi texts.
Notes
1
Venuti, L (1995) The Translator's Invisibility: A history of
translation.
London and New York: Routledge
2 Massardier-Kenney, F (1997) 'Towards a Redefinition of
Feminist Translation Practice'. In The Translator, 3:1, 55-69
3 Simon, S (1996) Gender in Translation: Cultural identity and
the politics of transmission. London and New York: Routledge
4 Palmer, A (2018) 'From Ada'a AMA: Terra ignota, language,
gender and music'. In Ex Urbe, 8/2/18; bit.ly/exurbeadaa
5 Nida, E and Taber, CR (1969) The Theory and Practice of
Translation. Leiden: E J Brill
My approach to gender in the
translation had to be as experimental
as the approach in the source text
SCI-FI TRADITION
Elisabeth Moss
stars as Offred in
The Handmaid's Tale,
which uses naming
conventions to explore
gender roles (left);
while Native Tongue
and The Female Man
(below) use language
to comment on gender
©
C4/E
LLY
DASSAS/H
ULU
