Traducción feminista transnacional: instrumentalización y manipulación de la recepción transnacional del relato autobiográfico sobre violencia sexual

Abstract

Abstract Transnational feminist translation studies stand for activism, cooperation and solidarity in connecting feminist thinking developed in all parts of the world (Alvarez et al. 2014, Castro/Ergun 2017, Flotow/ Farahzad 2017, Flotow 2019). One of the important issues is wartime sexual violence, which is the focus of this article, and constitutes a feminist, transnational phenomenon. The account of wartime sexual violence by female victims faces instrumentalization and manipulation by the agents involved in the publication process, including the translators, who are an active part of the patriarchal literary system, with the purpose “to make them fit in with the dominant, or one of the dominant ideological and poetical currents of their time” (Lefevere 1992: 8). The transnational reception, thus, is driven by ideological and commercial interests that agents in a literary system negotiate. The aim of this article is to analyse the transnational reception process, examined under the perspective of transnational feminist translation, and based on questions as who rewrites and how is the wartime sexual violence account rewritten. Undertaking a case study, the diary ‘Eine Fau in Berlin’ of an anonymous female author, Anonyma, who describes rape, prostitution and the gender relations in the context of Second World War, an analytical framework is developed to shed light on the question how women’s writing on wartime sexual violence and its transnational reception are determined by mechanisms of instrumentalization and manipulation that are due to the conceptions and moral values that prevail over wartime sexual violence in two different political and historical eras. We conclude that transnational feminist translation enables activism and solidarity about wartime sexual violence beyond geographical limitations. This leads to the empowerment of the victims on a transnational level.