Saggio Lori Chamberlain PDF

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Riassunto del saggio di Chamberlain dal libro The Translation Studies Reader...

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“GENDER AND THE METAPHORICS OF TRANSLATION” LORI CHAMBERLAIN Lori Chamberlain uses in her essay the example of Clara Schuman, which plays her husband’s works to represent the opposition between productive and reproductive work. This opposition organizes the way a culture values the work. Originality, writing, creativity go together with paternity, authority, masculinity. Derivative, secondary, weak work is attributed to the feminine. Lori is interested in this opposition because it also marks the distinction between writing and translating. Writing is the masculine and original part; translating is the feminine and derivative work. Indeed, also the American copyright law treats the translation under the rubric of “derivative works”. So there is a parallelism between the condition of women with men and the condition of the translator with the author. Translators remain in the service of authors/readers, and women in the service of men. As a result, the language used to describe the process and product of translation is often sexist, full of images of “domination”. The original is seen as the “natural”, “truthful”, and “lawful” entity; while the translation is at best an echo (a copy), something artificial, false, and treasonous. This perceived threat coming from translations is then somewhat kept at bay through the translation contracts, which presumably ensures that the translations will be “faithful” to their source texts. A proof of the sexualization of translation is the tag “les belles infidèles” (translations that are beautiful but do not respect the fidelity to the original): it was coined in the seventeenth century by the French scholar Gilles Manage. This tag is already famous not only because of the rhyme, but also because it creates a similarity between the issues of fidelity in translation and in marriage. A woman and a translation cannot be both faithful and beautiful. So here operates the “double standard”: women’s and translation’s unfaithful is publicly tried, while the husband and the original text cannot commit betrayal. For this reason, translation is always struggling for authority and paternity.

Also the Earl of Roscommon wrote in his treatise on translation about this struggle. He says that, in order to guarantee the fidelity and the originality of the translator’s work, the translator has to choose an author as he choose a friend. It means that the familiarity between author and translator and the similarity of their thoughts, words and style allow more faithful translation. Through the familiarity with the author, the translator becomes the man and father himself. As father, the translator has to protect the “chastity” of the female (text). This means that he must not damage the text with un unfaithful translation, adding and removing and changing the sense of the text. Also Thomas Francklin wrote about the gendering of translation. Like the Earl of Roscommon, he represents the translator as the male, but now he is also a seducer, while the author and the text are the mistress. They are seduced by the translator and they are now powerless. The translator softens the blemishes of the text and improves its beauties, making the translation beautiful but at meantime also unfaithful. Schleiermacher, instead, represents the translation as a problem of fidelity to the mother tongue. The translator, as father, must be faithful to his mother tongue, which is seen as natural, in order to produce a legitimate offspring, otherwise he will produce unnatural children. Translation is also a form of conquest, as Nietzsche says, and of colonization. It is a means of enriching the language and the literature of a notion. It is equated to a military success because translation can expand both literary and political borders. The nations who have used translation to expand their borders are: the German and the Roman ones, indeed, German romantics used to Germanize literature, while the Roman Empire incorporated the Greek culture. This politics of colonialism overlap with the politics of gender: in the 16th century, in England, translation was viewed as a public duty. A proof is written in the preface of the translation of Horace by Thomas Drant. He wrote that he has made a captive woman a wife, that means that he has transformed Horace’s work in order to make it morally suitable for the English culture of that time: he has Englished things, mended his similitudes, mollified his hardness, and altered his words but not the purpose of the text. That is why the concept of fidelity of the translation changes according to the purpose of the translation itself, which can be an aesthetic purpose or a cultural one. a) In the gender version:

 According to Gilles Manage, translation are “les belles infidèles”, so the fidelity defines the relation between the translated text (which is the female) and the original text (the male).  According to the Earl of Roscommon, fidelity is also the relation between the translation (the female) and the author (the male). Then, the translator, thanks to the familiarity with the author, becomes the father of the translation, so he has to protect its chastity. This means that he has to protect the translation form its propensity to infidelity. b) Considering the concept of the mother tongue: according to Schleiermacher, fidelity defines the relation between the author or translator (the males) and their mother tongue (the female). The mother tongue has to be protected by rapes and vilification. But paradoxically, this fidelity can justify all the transformations and changes made in order to make the text morally suitable in a certain context and culture. That is what Thomas Drant has done with his translation of Horace. Gavronsky, instead, divides the world of the translation metaphors into two camps: 1) The pietistic: where the relation between translator and text is represented with courtly and Christian love. The translator (the knight) pledges fidelity to the lady. 2) The cannibalistic: the aggressive translator takes possession of the original, ingurgitates its words and transforms them into his tongue, eliminating the original creator. The cannibalistic view of Gavronsky is based on Steiner’s model of translation, which divides the process of translation in four parts: 1) Initiative trust: the translator trusts in the texts and tries to understand its meaning. 2) Aggressive step: the translator penetrates the text as an act of erotic possession. 3) Naturalization of the text: the translator makes the text part of his language. 4) Compensation: the translator restores the balance....