18 The Linguist Vol/64 No/1
ciol.org.uk/thelinguist
FEATURES
As the number of translated novels by female authors
increases, Helen Vassallo asks which women are being
translated, and how activists can be more inclusive
F
or several years, a growing number of
voices in both academic and industry
contexts have drawn attention to the
imperative to address diversity within
publishing, where recent reports suggest that
diversity has plateaued. In the past decade,
the lack of gender equality has been
repeatedly highlighted with regard to existing
and pervasive imbalances in the commission
and publication of literature in translation.
In 2013, translator Alison Anderson wrote
an impassioned article asking 'Where are the
Women in Translation?'
1
after her research
into publications and prize lists indicated that
only around a quarter of books in translation
were written by women, and that books by
women writers made up an even smaller
proportion of literary translation prizewinners
and prize shortlists.
The year after Anderson's observations,
book blogger Meytal Radzinski declared
August 'Women in Translation' month,
announcing that she would read only books
by women in translation for the month, and
encouraging her online followers to do the
same. Over the last ten years Women in
Translation month has grown in popularity,
with a growing network of participants across
the world. Many publishers regularly offer
discounts on their translated titles by women
authors in this month, and the #WiTMonth
hashtag accumulates thousands of posts
across social media platforms every year.
In 2015, the Women in Translation tumblr
was co-founded by translators Margaret
Carson and Alta L Price, bringing together
articles, studies, reviews and news of book
releases that support women in translation.
And in 2016, translator Katy Derbyshire
inaugurated a new series of articles on LitHub
focusing on women writers from around the
world as yet untranslated into English.
In 2017, the Warwick Prize for Women in
Translation was established at the University
of Warwick by Professor Chantal Wright, in
response to male-dominated literary prize
lists. Then, in 2018, I founded the Translating
Women project to investigate and challenge
the lack of representation of women's voices
in translation. This coincided with the Year of
Publishing Women, a movement based on a
2015 provocation by novelist Kamila Shamsie.
It challenged publishers to release only
books authored by women in 2018 to mark
the centenary of the first British women
gaining the right to vote.
All of these initiatives have worked to
challenge ongoing barriers to gender parity
in translation (barriers that have been
analysed eloquently by Carson
2
), and have
been part of a welcome shift towards greater
gender equality in the publication of
translated literature. In 2023, Chad Post
Breaking into the
BOOK CLUB
©
PEXELS
