Translating harassment: cross cultural reconstruction of the feminist identity in translated fiction

Author:

Irshad Isra,Yasmin MusaratORCID

Abstract

AbstractThe issue of the sexual harassment of women is often discussed in academic literature, but how this issue is dealt with translated works has rarely been investigated. Targeting this lacuna, this study analyses the construction of the identity of the sexually harassed woman in two selected translations of a single novel. It also investigates how the translators’ perspectival positions are reflected in the translated versions of the source text. Mastoor’s Urdu novel, Aangan, and its two English translations by Rockwell and Hussain were chosen and used a parallel corpus. NLTK is used for the extraction of frequencies and concordances from this corpus. The data are analysed through critical discourse analysis (CDA), while drawing upon the theoretical assumptions of feminist translation. Both translators used discursive and translation strategies according to their perspectival positions. Rockwell has treated the issue of sexual harassment with sensitivity, whereas Hussain has shown tolerance of it and romanticized this issue. The image of the harassed woman appears maintained or magnified in Rockwell’s text, in which feminist translation strategies of supplementing, hijacking, adding commentary, substituting, deleting, adding and intensifying discursive choices were found to be employed. However, Hussain presented the same gender ideology as the one found in the source text, at times, the image of harassment was found to be de-emphasized in the translated version. She has mainly used the translation strategies of literal translation, omission, and explicitness. Moreover, the discursive processes of foregrounding, mitigated linguistic choices, and nominalisation were also employed. The findings imply that both translated texts depict the translators’ subjectivity, where the Rockwell’s translation seems to highlight the image of sexual harassment of women in Pakistani society.

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC

Subject

General Economics, Econometrics and Finance,General Psychology,General Social Sciences,General Arts and Humanities,General Business, Management and Accounting

Reference45 articles.

1. Anhatmakkar (2021) “Is Bollywood romanticizing harassment?” Yale Daily News. August 28. https://yaledailynews.com/sjp/2021/08/28/is-bollywood-romanticizing-harassment/

2. Bassnett S, Lefevere A eds. (1990) Translation, history, and culture. Pinter Publishers, London

3. Bafna N (2019) “Book review of Aangan”. Scroll. https://scroll.in/article/921325/this-novel-in-translation-imagines-the-partition-from-the-perspective-of-women-who-stayed-at-home

4. Baker M (1992) In Other words: a course book on translation. Routledge, London, New York

5. Baker P, Ellece S (2011) Key terms in discourse analysis. Continuum International Publishing Group, New York

Cited by 1 articles. 订阅此论文施引文献 订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献

同舟云学术

1.学者识别学者识别

2.学术分析学术分析

3.人才评估人才评估

"同舟云学术"是以全球学者为主线,采集、加工和组织学术论文而形成的新型学术文献查询和分析系统,可以对全球学者进行文献检索和人才价值评估。用户可以通过关注某些学科领域的顶尖人物而持续追踪该领域的学科进展和研究前沿。经过近期的数据扩容,当前同舟云学术共收录了国内外主流学术期刊6万余种,收集的期刊论文及会议论文总量共计约1.5亿篇,并以每天添加12000余篇中外论文的速度递增。我们也可以为用户提供个性化、定制化的学者数据。欢迎来电咨询!咨询电话:010-8811{复制后删除}0370

www.globalauthorid.com

TOP

Copyright © 2019-2024 北京同舟云网络信息技术有限公司
京公网安备11010802033243号  京ICP备18003416号-3