A Gendered Voice in Translation: Translating Like a Feminist

This article addresses the paradoxes and challenges of the gendered voice in translation. The experience of translating feminist −as well as not-feminist− texts may lead us to rethink women’s identity, in terms of the essentialist versus constructionist debates: from the strategic need to be a feminist, −to accept one’s feminist identity− to the realisation that one can never become really one, assuming one’s identity as performative and contingent.
Addressing a gendered reader implies an interpretive choice in translation. Envisaging a specific readership is challenging, especially in Romance languages where the subject is always gendered, both socially and grammatically. Gendered translations go far beyond using specific textual strategies for avoiding sexism. Rather, they lead to a constant rethinking of agency, of who does what both in and out of the text. Ultimately, this may involve translating like an invisible agent.
This article is illustrated with specific translation options from the author’s rendering into Catalan of Diana Fuss’ (no es necesaria) Essentially Speaking (Vic: Eumo, 1999), with the aim of rethinking writing practices, and identities, ‘like’ feminists.