Gender reframing in literary translation

Abstract

The paper aims to account for gender as one of the pervasive forces driving transformation of the literary text structure in translation and to outline possible theoretical and practical benefits of approaching gender as a cognitive dominant shaping the internal structure of the translator’s perspective. The research belonging with the sociocognitive framework of Discourse Studies, gender is approached simultaneously as a function of the translator’s socially modulated self, a cognitive dominant driving the translator’s discourse and the translator’s practical concern. A number of English-Russian literary translations are discussed in order to illustrate that, in view of such complex nature, throughout the translation act gender modulates 1) the cognitive processes of enacting the phenomenological perspective, from which the translator mentally construes the literary text world, and 2) the discourse processes of reframing the narrative perspective, which is argued to be an adaptive instrument of the translator’s strategy. A number of cognitive and aesthetic modes of reframing gender are distinguished that have been revealed to be commonly present in English-into-Russian literary translations. The striking frequency of gender reframing evinces the urgent need for the translator to reflect on pervasive gender-driven differences in the way the world is perceived, conceptualized and categorized by different people and the respective differences in the structure of the narrator’s perspective and that of each fictional character, all of which have to be one way or another relayed in the translator’s text. In this respect it might be feasible for the translator to adhere to the performative concept of gender, which accounts for the inherent dynamicity, fluidity and multiplicity of gender identities ‘performed’ in different parts of the literary text and acknowledges an inevitable marked contrast between alternative profiles of seemingly one and the same gender. Overall, the research findings reveal the need for the translator to adopt and implement a gender-sensitive translation strategy, which is likely to considerably enhance the literary value of their translations.

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