Gender, Sex and Translation

Book excerpt: Gendered and sexual identities are unstable constructions which reveal a great deal about the ideologies and power relatinships affecting individuals and societies. The interaction between gender/sex studies and translation studies points to a fascinating arena of discursive conflict in which our intimate desires and identities are established or rejected, (re)negotiated or censored, sanctioned or tabooed. This volume explores diverse and heterogeneous aspects of the manipulation of gendered and sexual identities. Contributors examine translation as a feminist practice and/or theory; the importance of gender-related context in translation; the creation of a female image of secondariness through dubbing and state censoriship; attempts to suppress the blantantly patriarchal and sexist references in the German dubbed versions of James Bond films; the construction of national heroism and national identity as male preserve; the enactment of Chamberlain's 'gender metaphorics' in Scliar and Calvino; the transformation of Japanese romance fiction through Harlequin translations; the translations of the erotic as site for testing the complex rewriting(s) of identity in sociohistorical term; and the emergence of NRTs (New Reproductive Technologies), which is causing fundamental changes in the perception of 'creativity' or 'procreation' as male domains.