DeMarco, Toto - Gender Approaches in The Translation Classroom

GENDER
APPROACHES
IN THE
TRANSLATION
CLASSROOM
Training the Doers
Edited By
Marcella De Marco
and Piero Toto
Gender Approaches in the Translation Classroom
Marcella De Marco · Piero Toto
Editors
Gender Approaches
in the Translation
Classroom
Training the Doers
Editors
Marcella De Marco Piero Toto
London Metropolitan University London Metropolitan University
London, UK London, UK
ISBN 978-3-030-04389-6 ISBN 978-3-030-04390-2 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04390-2
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Contents
1 Introduction: The Potential of Gender Training

in the Translation Classroom 1
Marcella De Marco and Piero Toto
2 Turning Translation Training into Life Training 9

Francesca Vigo
3 Parameters, Thresholds and Liminal Spaces: Designing

a Course on Sex, Gender and Translation 27
Pauline Henry-Tierney
4 Social Action and Critical Consciousness in the

Socialization of Translators-to-Be: A Classroom
Experience 45
Robert Martínez-Carrasco
5 Teaching Gender Issues in Advertising Translation:

The Case of University Marketing 63
Antonia Montés
v
vi
Contents
6 Queer(y)ing (Im)Possibilities in the British Academic

Translation Classroom 83
Michela Baldo
7 Gayspeak in the Translation Classroom 103

Irene Ranzato
8 Indirect Sexism in John Grisham’s Sycamore Row

(2013): Unveiling Sexual Inequality Through
a Gender-Committed Pedagogy in the Translation
Classroom 127
José Santaemilia
9 Ideological Transfer in the Translation Activity: Power

and Gender in Emma Donoghue’s Kissing the Witch 145
María Amor Barros del Río and Elena Alcalde Peñalver
10 Integrating Gender Perspective in Interpreter Training:

A Fundamental Requirement in Contexts of Gender
Violence 167
Carmen Toledano Buendía
11 The Future of Academia, Gender and Queer Pedagogy:

Concluding Remarks 189
Index 195
Notes on Contributors
Elena Alcalde Peñalver is an Assistant Professor in the Department of

Modern Languages at the University of Alcalá, Spain. She has authored
and co-authored several papers on different aspects of translation didac-
tics and specialized translation. She has worked as a sworn translator
and interpreter since 2010.
Michela Baldo is an honorary fellow in Translation Studies at the
University of Hull and holds a Ph.D. in Translation Studies from the
University of Manchester. She has conducted research in the past on
Italian-Canadian works and their written and audio-visual translation
into Italian, and a monograph on the topic entitled Italian-Canadian
Narratives of Return: Analysing Cultural Translation in Diasporic Writing
is in preparation with Palgrave. More recently she has been investigating
queer drag performances in Italy and published articles on the subject.
She is now conducting research on the role of translation in queer femi-
nist activism in Italy.
María Amor Barros del Río is Associate Professor at the Universidad
de Burgos, Spain. Her research focuses mainly on gender studies and
contemporary fiction in English, particularly Irish fiction. Other fields
vii
viii
of interest are critical pedagogy and second language teaching. She has
published extensively in collective works and peer-reviewed journals; she
is the author of Metáforas de su tierra: Breve historia de las mujeres irland-
esas (2004), El trabajo de las mujeres pobres (2010) and A Practical Guide
to Address Gender Bias in Academia and Research (2016).
Marcella De Marco is a Senior Lecturer in Translation at London
Metropolitan University, UK. She is the author of Audiovisual
Translation Through a Gender Lens (2012).
Pauline Henry-Tierney is a lecturer in French and Translation Studies
at Newcastle University, UK. She teaches modules at undergraduate and
postgraduate levels on literary translation, interpreting and subtitling.
Her research interests revolve around questions of gender, sexuality and
translation, particularly in relation to contemporary women’s writing in
French and Simone de Beauvoir’s philosophical texts. Recent publica-
tions include a book chapter on translating sexual alterity and another
on matrophobia in autofictional women’s writing, while forthcoming
publications include a monograph entitled Translating Transgressive
Texts, an article on women’s erotic writing and a book chapter on
“Translation and Queer Theory”.
Robert Martínez-Carrasco is a lecturer in the Department of
Translation and Communication at Jaume I University (Spain), where
he lectures in Inverse Translation and Advanced English for Translation.
He received his Ph.D. in Applied Languages and Translation from that
university in 2017, with a dissertation that explored the epistemological
bases of legal translation education in contemporary higher education
settings. Prior to that, he received his M.A. in Legal Translation from
City, University of London (UK) in 2011. Primarily an educator and a
practising translator, his research focuses on translation training, peda-
gogy, and queer representation.
Antonia Montés is Senior Lecturer in Translation, in the German
section, at the University of Alicante, Spain, where she teaches liter-
ary translation and translation from Spanish to German, focusing on
advertising translation. Her main research area is translation and gen-
der, on the one hand, especially in advertising translation, where she has
ix
published mainly on the branding of beauty products and its discursive

representation of the female body and, on the other hand, on sexual
violence in autobiographic female literature.
Irene Ranzato is a tenured researcher and lecturer in English language
and translation (audiovisual and intersemiotic) at Sapienza University of
Rome (Italy). She has a Ph.D. in Translation Studies (Imperial College
London) and her research interests lie at the intersection of linguistic,
cultural and ideological issues. Among her most recent publications:
Translating Culture Specific References—The Case of Dubbing (Routledge,
2016); North and South—British Dialects in Fictional Language (Status
Quaestionis, 11, 2016); Queen’s English?: Gli accenti dell’Inghilterra
(Bulzoni, 2017). She co-edited Ideological Manipulation in Audiovisual
Translation (special issue of Altre Modernità, 2016) and Linguistic and
Cultural Representation in Audiovisual Translation (Routledge, 2018).
José Santaemilia is Associate Professor of English Language and
Linguistics at the Universitat de València, and a legal and literary trans-
lator. His main research interests are gender and language, sexual lan-
guage and translation. He has edited Género, lenguaje y traducción
(2003) and Gender, Sex and Translation: The Manipulation of Identities
(2005). He has co-authored the first critical edition and transla-
tion of Fanny Hill (2000) into Spanish with José Pruñonosa, recently
co-edited Gender and Sexual Identities in Transition: International
Perspectives (2008) with Patricia Bou, and Woman and Translation:
Geographies, Voices and Identities (2011), with Luise von Flotow. He is
also the Managing Editor of MonTI—Monographies of Translation and
Interpreting.
Carmen Toledano Buendía, Ph.D. is Associate Professor at the
Department of English Philology at the Universidad de La Laguna
(Tenerife, Spain). She has extensive experience teaching conference and
public service interpreting and in the design and management of spe-
cialized courses on interpreting. Her primary research includes work
on descriptive translation studies (more specifically translation and
reception processes of Spanish-translated English literature) and didac-
tics of community interpreting. She was one of the main researchers in
x
SOS-VICS, a European project whose objective is to improve training

of gender violence professional interpreters. She is currently the aca-
demic director of the Master en Interpretación de Conferencias (ULL).
Piero Toto is a Senior Lecturer in Translation at London Metropolitan
University, UK. His research interests include translation technology,
localization, gender and queer studies.
Francesca Vigo lectures in English Language and Linguistics at the
University of Catania, DISUM. She holds a Ph.D. in English and
Anglo-American Studies, a Diploma in Social Communications, an
M.A. in Applied Linguistics and a Post-graduate diploma in Literary
Translation. Her main research fields focus on Sociolinguistics,
Language and Gender Studies, Diversity narratives, Language contact,
Pragmatics in multilingual contexts, World Englishes, and Translation.
Lately she has focused on migrant and migration narratives, imagery
as a category of meaning construction, social attitudes construction
towards LGBTIs. She has extensively published in national and interna-
tional publications on these topics.
1
Introduction: The Potential of Gender
Training in the Translation Classroom
Translator Training has, for a number of years, been a key topic of

research in Translation Studies—its methods, techniques and paradigms
having been the subject of discussion for decades (Holmes 1972; Pym
2009). Some studies have weighed the effectiveness of process-oriented
vs product-oriented approaches (Gile 2009; Orlando 2012), while oth-
ers have focused specifically on the impact of translation technology and
its most recent developments (Pym 2003, 2012; Marshman and Bowker
2012; Doherty 2016). Kiraly’s (2000) social constructivist approach to
training distinguishes between translation and translator competence,
the former focusing mainly on the linguistic skills needed to “produce
an adequate target text” (2000, p. 10) and the latter encompassing
M. De Marco (*) · P. Toto 
London Metropolitan University, London, UK
e-mail: [email protected]
P. Toto
© The Author(s) 2019 1
M. De Marco and P. Toto (eds.), Gender Approaches in the Translation Classroom,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04390-2_1
2
M. De Marco and P. Toto
a wider set of skills relating to the effective use of technological tools

(2000, pp. 9–13). This can be seen as a further attempt at underpinning
practice-based activities within traditional theoretical frameworks and at
fostering best practices in academia. Reliance on consolidated practices
in translator training becomes particularly poignant when translators are
faced with areas of knowledge for which no such practices are available
and challenges arise. This has implications for the translator’s set of ide-
als, values, beliefs and (identity) needs affecting, in turn, the pedagogy
of their taught courses. This is also particularly true for translation’s sis-
ter discipline, i.e. Interpreting.
Gender Studies is a representative example of such areas of knowl-
edge lacking specific training benchmarks that can help translators
overcome the challenges posed by sexual/identity discourse from one
language into another. As a matter of fact, suitable tools or sensitivity
to deal with the issues at hand may not have been developed or imple-
mented in the relevant target languages/cultures. Gender as such is to
be considered as a cross-cutting theme that affects the private and the
public sphere alike and—although to a different extent—all professions
and disciplines.
Since gender equality has become one of the primary goals pro-
moted by large world organizations such as the Commonwealth and
the International Labour Organization, gender training has increas-
ingly been perceived as a need and, at the same time, as an essential
tool to enhance mainstreaming, i.e. “a strategy for making women’s as
well as men’s concerns and experiences an integral dimension in the
design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and
programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres so that
women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated”
(International Labour Office 1998).
The advocates of gender mainstreaming have usually been the mem-
bers of non-governmental organizations and development agencies that
have approached governmental institutions to get their support for pro-
moting suitable training strategies, mainly in economic development.
This urge has mostly interested sectors such as health, agriculture and
energy (i.e. those more directly linked to economic sustainability).
Education is one of the sectors contributing to economic sustainability
1 Introduction: The Potential of Gender Training …
3
as pointed out by the World Economic Forum (2015), which states that
“education provides the skills people need to thrive in the new sustain-
able economy, working in areas such as renewable energy, smart agri-
culture, forest rehabilitation, the design of resource-efficient cities, and
sound management of healthy ecosystems. Perhaps most important,
education can bring about a fundamental shift in how we think [and] act ”
(our emphasis). As a matter of fact, Higher Education (HE) institutions
have recently started integrating gender-inclusive agendas in their strate-
gic plans as part of their equality and diversity policies.
Translation practices in academia have also been reconceived as a
trigger for social change (Tymoczko and Gentzler 2002); for example,
as a means by which the gender bias inherent in the texts—and that
translators (sub)consciously risk transmitting in their work—may be
questioned and possibly reversed. At the same time, gender-inclusive
language practices have started to spread more widely across countries
(Farid 2016) as a result of the feminist campaigns aimed at implement-
ing the use of non-sexist language in political and institutional contexts
in the 1990s (Miller and Swift 1995; Sabatini 1987). However, the
application of feminist translation strategies has usually been perceived
as a form of manipulation, which is irreconcilable with real-life assign-
ments, and there does not seem to be a unanimous consensus about the
feasibility of such implementation. Similarly, gender-sensitivity is not
perceived as being a pressing need by all agents involved in the transla-
tion process. This is because gender tends to be regarded as something
intimate, not as an integral dimension of someone’s professional duties.
In the last few years, there have been lacklustre attempts at using
the translation classroom as a way to enhance gender awareness, in the
hope of instilling the habit of thinking of gender as all-encompassing
and affecting all spheres of life, including work responsibilities (Corrius
et al. 2016; De Marco 2011).
In this volume, such practices are explored from a variety of perspec-
tives and by contributors whose academic, professional and personal
experience informs their pedagogy. The range of fields included in this
volume include the translation of literature, legal translation, pedagogy/
curriculum design, interpreting, the translation of advertising, and
audiovisual translation.
4
Vigo’s opening chapter (Chapter 2) offers an overarching perspective

that transcends disciplinary boundaries, her claim being that a success-
ful translator training model is one that aims to develop opportunities
for critical reflection on linguistic behaviours rather than technical skills
to apply hard and fast rules. According to the author, this goal can only
be achieved by integrating a framework that combines cognitive linguis-
tics and critical discourse analysis, since both approaches are concerned
with the relationship between lexical choices and social actions. In the
field of literary translation, Barrós and Alcalde (Chapter 9) explore
the use of literary texts in a third-year undergraduate class of English
as a Foreign Language to discuss the implementation of a three-phase
methodology for the purpose of testing students’ perceptions of wom-
en’s roles in society and, eventually, developing their critical thinking
on the translation process when gender issues are at stake. Along the
same lines, Santaemilia (Chapter 8) provides an interesting insight into
the discussions that have arisen from the analysis of the published—as
well as students’—translations of legal thrillers and uses these to inter-
rogate the androcentric logic underpinning the patronizing representa-
tion of women in the legal profession. Henry-Tierney (Chapter 3) also
takes literature—and more specifically contemporary women’s writ-
ing—as a backdrop to inspect the institutional challenges that impinge
on the design of a module in translating gender and sexuality. At the
same time, she illustrates the extent to which modern Virtual Learning
platforms can positively encourage students’ discussions and help them
tackle these tricky/sensitive topics. Henry-Tierney’s perspective on the
challenges and rewards of using educational tools to promote a gen-
der-inclusive approach to teaching and learning aligns us closer to areas
in which gender features prominently but that have long remained
unchartered—that is, curriculum design, localization and interpret-
ing. In describing the classroom-based activities designed with the aim
of integrating a feminist/queer pedagogy into her translation courses,
Baldo (Chapter 6) voices her criticism against the constraints posed by
British neoliberal HE institutions. The author argues that while gen-
dered perspectives keep being used as objects of study in most transla-
tion modules, in fact universities do not fully appreciate the ideological
dimension of such perspectives and, therefore, resist spreading their use
5
more widely in the curriculum. As a result, universities fail to instigate

a change in students’ awareness and, in the long term, in social respon-
sibilities. Montés (Chapter 5) also unmasks the contradictions inherent
to HE institutions that promote themselves as tolerant and supportive
of gender equality principles, but that hardly ever implement gender-in-
clusive language in their marketing campaigns (e.g., university websites,
leaflets). Another interesting perspective into the translation of websites
is offered by Carrasco (Chapter 4); however, Chapter 4 focuses, not on
the translation of marketing material, but rather on the translation of
LGBT+ organizations’ websites. Real-life tasks designed around a trans-
lation project are here presented as a successful practice, which prompts
students to reflect upon their role as text producers and their involve-
ment in public engagement initiatives. While Carrasco emphasizes the
positive impact of using ‘authentic’ educational materials and tasks in
the contemporary academic settings, Ranzato (Chapter 7) points out
the ‘inauthentic’ representation of queerness featured in dubbed films
and TV series. She uses these as a reference to design translation tasks
and questionnaires aimed at gauging students’ level of awareness of
(and sensitivity to) LGBT-related matters and eventually sensitizing
their translation approach when dealing with these matters in their role
as future translators. An original point of view is offered by Toledano
Buendía (Chapter 10) who examines the challenges that interpreters
face when they interact with victims of gender violence predominantly
coming from minor ethnic communities. In such situations, ethical and
political considerations are at stake as interpreters feel that getting prop-
erly trained to develop critical awareness of their professional role and
internalized cultural biases is a must.
The wide range of experiences and reflections presented herein give
food for thought about areas of concern that are not easily tackled at the
institutional level: the existence of gender-inclusive (language) practices
aimed at avoiding/overelaborating sexist and homophobic connotations,
which can be developed in class to challenge students’ attitudes and
behaviours; whether gender awareness can be integrated in the class-
room as an everyday mode of expression or whether it is perceived as
an unachievable ideal; to what extent institutional constraints discour-
age the implementation of gender as a valid didactic (and translation)
6
strategy; and how concretely gender-derogatory usages can be avoided

and non-heteronormative practices can be activated through the
curriculum.
We hope that through the authors’ brave attempts to answer these
questions, the readers will appreciate the vast potential of this volume
and will feel encouraged to embark on similar research and pedagogic
projects in this emerging field.
References
Corrius, M., M. De Marco, and E. Espasa. 2016. Situated Learning and
Situated Knowledge: Gender and Translating Audiovisual Adverts. The
Interpreter and Translator Trainer 10 (1): 59–75.
De Marco, M. 2011. Bringing Gender into the Subtitling Classroom. In
Audiovisual Translation: Subtitles and Subtitling—Theory and Foreign
Language Practice, ed. L. Incalcaterra McLoughlin, M. Biscio, and M.Á.
Ní Mhainnín, 139–155. New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am
Main, Oxford, and Wien: Peter Lang.
Doherty, S. 2016. The Impact of Translation Technologies on the Process and
Product of Translation. International Journal of Communication 10 (2016):
947–969.
Farid, G. 2016. Integration or Discrimination of French Feminine Grades
and Titles? In Language for International Communication: Linking
Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. I. Karapetjana and D. Liepiņa, 41–48.
Latvia: University of Latvia.
Gile, D. 2009. Basic Concepts and Models for Interpreter and Translator Training,
Rev. ed. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing.
Holmes, J. 1972. Translated! Papers on Literary Translation and Translation
Studies. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
International Labour Office. 1998. Gender Mainstreaming in Local Economic
Development Strategies: A Guide. Geneva: ILO.
Kiraly, D. 2000. A Social Constructivist Approach to Translator Education.
Empowerment from Theory to Practice. Manchester: St. Jerome.
Marshman, E., and L. Bowker. 2012. Translation Technologies as Seen
Through the Eyes of Educators and Students: Harmonizing Views with the
Help of a Centralized Teaching and Learning Resource. In Global Trends in
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Translator and Interpreter Training: Mediation and Culture, ed. S. Hubscher-

Davidson and M. Borodo, 69–95. London and New York: Continuum.
Miller, C., and K. Swift. 1995. The Handbook of Non-sexist Writing for Writers,
Editors and Speakers, 3rd ed. London: The Women’s Press.
Orlando, M. 2012. Training of Professional Translators in Australia: Process-
Oriented and Product-Oriented Evaluation Approaches. In Global Trends in
Translator and Interpreter Training: Mediation and Culture, ed. S. Hubscher-
Davidson and M. Borodo, 197–216. London and New York: Continuum.
Pym, A. 2003. Redefining Translation Competence in an Electronic Age,
in Defence of a Minimalist Approach. Meta: Translators’ Journal 48 (4):
481–497.
———. 2009. Translator Training. Pre-print Text Written for the Oxford
Companion to Translation Studies. Available at http://www.tinet.
org/~apym/on-line/training/2009_translator_training.pdf. Accessed 14
October 2017.
———. 2012. Translation Skill-Sets in a Machine-Translation Age. Available
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pdf. Accessed 14 October 2017.
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Per la scuola e per l’editoria scolastica. Rome: Presidenza del Consiglio dei
Ministri.
Tymoczko, M., and E. Gentzler (eds.). 2002. Translation and Power. Amherst
and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press.
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agenda/2015/05/why-education-is-the-key-to-sustainable-development/.
Accessed 16 November 2018.
2
Turning Translation Training
into Life Training
Francesca Vigo
1 Initial Considerations: Ethics

and Translator Training
Until recently, translation training has been merely focused on the tar-
get text. However, due to the reduction of distances, the increased need
to communicate between peoples speaking different languages, and the
professional contexts require more and more language professionals.
Translator training is, consequently, a key topic in research and cur-
riculum design. Early works like those by Holmes (1972) recognized
immediately the ‘keyness’ and importance of the issue. Similar to what
occurs in Translation Studies as a whole, the debate on training has
focused, mainly, on two texts. Strategies, methods and techniques have
been proposed and discussed for decades, and approaches have been eval-
uated against their efficiency with reference to the process or the product.
F. Vigo (*) 
Humanities Department (DISUM), University of Catania, Catania, Italy
10
F. Vigo
Recently, the focus has shifted to research methodologies (Williams

and Chesterman 2002) on the grounds that, “As an interdisciplinary
area of research, translation studies attracts students and scholars with
a wide range of backgrounds, who then need to face the challenge of
accounting for a complex object of enquiry that does not adapt itself
well to traditional methods in other fields of investigation” (Saldanha
and O’Brien 2013, p. v). Williams and Chesterman’s The Map:
A Beginner’s Guide to Doing Research in Translation Studies, was pub-
lished in 2002 and since then methodological approaches to research
within the Translation Studies domain have progressed. The interdisci-
plinary nature of Translation Studies implied that research methods and
analytical frameworks proper to other domains were taken into consid-
eration (Guba and Lincoln 2005; Snell-Hornby 2006). As far as trans-
lation training is concerned, methods belonging to social sciences and
psychology, such as the Thinking Aloud Protocol (TAP), more techno-
logical approaches like keystroke logging, and psychological eye-tracking
techniques proved to be productive and started to be used in translation
training. These approaches, which go beyond the more traditional lin-
guistic and cultural levels, show how wide in scope translation training
can be and how necessary it is to look at different domains and contexts.
As early as the 1980s, scholars working with translation started refer-
ring to methodologies borrowed from other disciplines, as Baker stated:
“Indeed, the various methodologies and theoretical frameworks bor-
rowed from different disciplines are increasingly being adapted and reas-
sessed to meet the specific needs of translation scholars” (Baker 1998,
p. 279). More recently, frameworks and analytical tools belonging to
social theory contributed to expand the array of methodologies used by
translation studies scholars.
“Translation studies is interdisciplinary not only because it borrows
from a wide range of disciplines but also because it covers a wide range
of practices” (Saldanha and O’Brien 2013, p. 3), and its interdiscipli-
narity is even more relevant as far as translation training is concerned.
Training translators or doers should be considered a key issue in our
current times. The need for language ‘mediators’ is still growing, despite
the increasing number of language courses and training programmes
meant to raise people’s competence in languages other than their own.
2 Turning Translation Training into Life Training
11
Moreover, training translators is gradually changing to encompass

aspects of life that were not previously considered. In addition, it is
turning into a perfect ‘place’ to raise students’/trainees’ awareness of
various issues, especially when specific matters, such as the gender-
related issues, are to be tackled. I believe that training translators can
be considered a form of social action, since it plays a kind of social role,
and can help to increase the trainees’ knowledge, turning them into
better-equipped citizens of the world.
I would argue that this is strictly related to ethics. I believe that a sig-
nificant ethical force characterizes translation and translation practice,
since the students might experience situations in which the content of
their translation flows down unexpected paths, making it necessary for
them to rely on ethics.
Hence, ethics is part of the translation process and, consequently,
needs to be taken into consideration in translation training too
(Corsellis 2005). Ethics, in fact, can play an important role when the
translation concerns highly debated topics, such as the gender-related
issues. In those cases, the translator may have a social role, since he or
she can contribute to (or refrain from) the spread of ideas, stimulate
some possible changes in people’s behaviours and so on.
As Baker and Maier (2011, p. 1) maintain: “the responsibility of
translators and interpreters extends beyond clients to include the wider
community to which they belong.” The classroom, hence, becomes
a perfect space for reflection and action, and translation training may
acquire political value.
Therefore, if translation is an ethical activity, then translators must
be trained accordingly, and acquire accountability. “[A]ccountability
means that they [translators T’s N.] are increasingly held responsible for
the consequences of their behaviours and therefore have to reflect care-
fully about how their decisions, both textual and non-textual, impact
the lives of others” (Baker and Maier 2011, p. 3). Yet, the question of
accountability is not easy to deal with. Trainers should aim to provide
trainees with methodological and strategical tools, in order for them to
be ready to reflect upon the various situations they may face in their
professional life. The risk, however, is relying on stiff and abstract prac-
tices. Training should make trainees aware that nearly every action in
12
F. Vigo
professional translation is a possible ethical action. Therefore, their

choices as translators can have an ethical meaning and, sometimes, vir-
tual consequences too. Let us consider those contexts where transla-
tors and interpreters are involved in situations where thorny issues are
discussed with concrete aims, where the decisions may affect people’s
lives. In such contexts, translators may play an ethical role on various
different levels. Linguistically, they could be responsible for the spread
or coinages of new terms (or for silencing others), and given the impor-
tance that lexical choices have in constructing narratives and mindsets,
their ‘linguistic’ actions could prove to be significant. As far as content
is concerned, translators are responsible for the clarity with which the
subject travels from one cultural context to another, and clarity is the
route to understanding: if it lacks clarity, no understanding can be pos-
sible. Translators can consciously opt for reduced intelligibility, thus
hindering the circulation of ideas and concepts. For these reasons, train-
ing increases its importance and ‘keyness.’
Nevertheless, what kind of training can we envisage for such a broad
aim? First of all, it has to be reflective, and thus focus on reasoning. This
is linked to cognition and to its importance in acquiring knowledge and
skills. Second, for the reflection to be productive it must be of a critical
nature; that is, translators should be taught to analyze the situation and
think about the possible future outcomes of their linguistic behaviours.
It is understood that this scenario does not encompass any prescrip-
tive approach to translation, which would be unproductively based on
rigid dos and don’ts, and on clear indications of what is right or wrong
on behalf of the trainers (and their preferences). This kind of training
affects the trainees more as individuals than as students and it is not
related to provide them with rules but with models of behaviours. It is a
deeper kind of training that affects the trainee’s personal reliability more
than his/her skills in applying and using rules and strategies.
With reference to this wider approach to translator training, my
research questions are:
– How can this kind of training be organized and structured?

– How can the classroom be turned into an awareness raising place?
13
– How can trainees be ‘forced’ to refer to reflections and cognition in

order to address translational problems, which are frequently of a
more linguistic nature?
To answer these questions, I carried out a research project with my

post-graduate students. Drawing on that teaching experience and on
some cognate research projects carried out with translators-to-be, I
will describe how translation courses may become ‘places’ where issues
like gender, identity and sexuality can be more fully understood and
better translated. For the purpose of this specific research activity, my
main focus will be on training planning and on the students’ responses,
using the latter as hints to evaluate the strength and effectiveness of the
devised structure of the training course.
2 Looking for Additional Tools:

A ‘Modest Proposal’
The aim of my research is broad and of a mixed nature. Rooted in the
assumption that translator training cannot be limited to providing stra-
tegical and analytical tools, but that it has to offer opportunities for
the students to concentrate on more ethical matters, the research pro-
ject developed along different stages. The first aimed at retrieving (or
creating) tools of analysis, which could help devising a more broad
approach as far as structuring translator training courses is concerned.
This step required a strictly focused literary review. The second step con-
centrated on the actual research actions, namely on the application of
the new tools to the classroom situation with specific reference to ethics.
Ultimately, the third step was devoted to turning the research actions
devised for my specific course context into more general and widely
operational actions.
The initial assumption of the first step, from which the search
for alternative tools started, was that mental and textual constructs
are linked to one another and that translation implies an in-depth
understanding. Bearing this in mind, my aim was to verify whether a
14
F. Vigo
framework of analysis, which combines Cognitive Linguistics (CL) and

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), may prove productive when dealing
with problematic issues. The reason why a possible convergence of CL
and CDA has been investigated is not related to mere theoretical con-
cerns, but rather linked to the urge for a different level of reflection in
which translation problems and ethical issues may be faced and solved.
CL is strictly related to understanding; understanding, in turn, is the
basis of translation. Understanding something equates to conceptual-
izing it, because when we understand we ‘see’ something in our brain.
Understanding a word means being able to place it in relation with
other semantically similar units; that is, categorize it—to choose it out
of other semantically similar lexical items. CL suggests (as in Langacker
1986, p. 4) that meaning is to be understood with reference to “cogni-
tive domains.”1 In terms of translation practice and training, this means
that meaning can be recreated in another language only by linking it
to other conceptual items. The latter would help achieving compre-
hension, providing a cognitive context and an analytical framework.
It seems, therefore, improbable for a language user/translator to under-
stand out of a chain of conceptual/cognitive actions, which, irrespec-
tive of their hierarchy, converge to unveil the meaning of the selected
semantic unit. Linguistic semantics is thus interdependent with cog-
nition but not exclusively dependent on it; it can rely on imagery too
(Langacker 1987).
Cognition and understanding are firmly interconnected, even though
they are placed on separate and different levels. Understanding is a cog-
nitive action, which may rely on cognitive primes and on‚imagery2 and
occurs before any linguistic processing and action.
Syllogistically, if understanding implies cognition and translating
implies understanding, then translating implies cognition, as I have
stated elsewhere (Vigo, in press).
Studies on how translation is linked to cognitivism are well
accounted for by Risku (2013). She describes how cognitive approaches
to translation mainly aim to understand how translators manage to
address difficult situations; how they succeed in generating meaning;
and the extent to which the translators’ cultural backgrounds influence
their activity. Cognitive studies try to explain what mental processes
15
“make complex cognitive behaviour like translation possible” (Thagard

2005, p. 3; see also Risku 2013; Schlesinger 2000). Translation can
be considered to be a ‘cognitive behaviour.’ The reason that cognitive
studies are interested in translation is because no other domain prof-
fers an analogous opportunity to observe mental processes ‘at work’
(Risku 2013).3 At the same time, Translation Studies looks at CL as
Chesterman (2009, p. 13) claims, “A broad outline of Translator Studies
would cover sociology, culture and cognition, all looking at the transla-
tor’s agency, in different ways”.4
As for CDA, it is “an amalgamation of a variety of micro-sociological
theories and also theories on society and power-based Michael
Foucault’s definition of power (Van Dijk 2001)” (Rahimi and Riasati
2011, p. 108).
The most canonical definition of CDA is Fairclough’s:
By CDA I mean discourse analysis which aims to systematically explore

often opaque relationships of causality and determination between (a)
discursive practices, events and texts, and (b) wider social and cultural
structures, relations, and processes; to investigate how such practices,
events and texts arise out of and are ideologically shaped by relations of
power and struggles over power; and to explore how the opacity of these
relationships between discourse and society is itself a factor securing
power and hegemony. (Fairclough 1995, pp. 132–133)
Equally significant is Wodak and Meyer’s definition:
CDA may be defined as fundamentally concerned with analyzing opaque

as well as transparent structural relationships of dominance, discrimina-
tion, power and control as manifested in language. In other words, CDA
aims to investigate critically social inequality as it is expressed, signalled,
constituted, and legitimized, and so on by language use (or in discourse).
(Wodak and Meyer 2001, p. 2)
Pedagogically, CDA has been used to provide insights about the

links between language, power, society and identity, among oth-
ers. As far as translator training is concerned, CDA proves productive
because it strongly stresses the link between language use and social life,
16
F. Vigo
whose interaction (or dialogue) occurs through social events and social
practices—that is to say, through texts and discourse.
Despite different existing opinions, CL is not so dissimilar from
CDA. Both support the claim that the linguistic level is the surface of
deeper (hidden) meanings; both agree on considering lexical choices
as social actions (Stockwell 1999, p. 3; Fairclough 1995, p. 131); both
ascribe great importance to pre-existing personal knowledge (Fairclough
1989, p. 24); and both consider language use a subjective event. The
difference between the two is the perspective from which they look at
language. While CDA focusses on how language is used to shape soci-
ety, CL concentrates on the conceptualization of events. As early as
1999, Peter Stockwell highlighted the links between CDA and CL,
using Fairclough’s and Lakoff’s works on the war in the 1990s as exam-
ples.5 He managed to demonstrate how the scholars’ analyses were con-
siderably comparable. He argued that, at the concrete level, CL and
CDA can be thought of as akin when they investigate discourse that is
“foregrounded for its ideological and political status” (Stockwell 1999,
p. 11). If the two approaches are not so diverse, then they can be inte-
grated to develop an alternative model of analysis for which CL pro-
vides tools to devise categories and spot conceptualization or figurative
language and CDA supplies frameworks and strategies to reflect upon
the link between language use and the social level. This proposal is also
corroborated by Hart who maintains that CL and CDA dovetail, since
CL places a strong interest on the relation between language use, mental
representations and attitudes toward society. In his opinion, cognitive
linguists and CDA scholars are converging to look for new method-
ologies (Hart 2015, pp. 323–324). The combination of CDA and CL
tools might prove fruitful for translator training because it simply forces
trainees to reflect differently (and more broadly) on the texts they have
to translate. The new combined framework of analysis will enable stu-
dents to move beyond the text and the translation context, towards
more general reflections, which may refer more easily to the ethical level.
The model devised for this research project includes the construction
of cognitive maps in relation to problematic lexical items. The construc-
tion of a cognitive map forces the students to put the tricky items in
17
relation to other similar items and other contexts. In doing so, a wider
picture is displayed to help the students to better define the meaning
they are looking for and, at the same time, to place the reflection out of
the text, thus achieving a more social dimension. Understanding is not
accomplished syntagmatically but, rather, paradigmatically, in Saussure’s
terms. Visualizing how lexical elements link to other lexical items to
enter a number of different semantic domains makes the students aware
of how socially influential their linguistic choices can be for society.
In addition, the combined framework of analysis foresees the use of
TAP for the construction of the cognitive map. Once the map is con-
structed, the lexical items that make it up will be examined by means
of CDA tools, in order to unveil what is hidden from a more ideologi-
cal point of view. The analysis is broader and entails a deeper reflection,
which can be ethically meaningful.
3 Combining CL and CDA in Translation

Training Classrooms
The second step of the research project consisted in the application of
the combined framework of analysis.
The context is, naturally, pedagogical. Within a post-graduate cur-
riculum in languages and translation, I chose to work with 25 Italian
students in their first year of study. The module was English Linguistics
and Translation and they had already started their training in translation
during their BA course. The level of the students, as far as their compe-
tence in English is concerned, was C1 or nearly C1. All of the students
also studied another foreign language.
The reason I chose to carry out my research in that specific class was
because of their level of language competence and also because they had
already studied and used CDA for their last English BA exam. An addi-
tional reason as to why I thought these students would fit my research
project perfectly was that their curriculum included Gender Studies as
a discipline and, since my aim was working within that thematic scope,
I assumed this background would be relevant.
18
F. Vigo
For this research project, I chose to analyze gender-related topics in

translator training, considering also the broad nature of the training
presented above, which includes the ethical perspective. Nowadays, it
is an extremely current topic and very motivating, for the strong bond
between education and ‘real life’ it succeeded in creating. The students
are more committed when they are involved in tasks they perceive as
socially relevant and ‘useful.’ Those tasks allow them to be socially solid
and better-informed citizens. The choice of the topic can be considered,
consequently, a significant pedagogical issue.
Gender studies, gender-related issues, gender and language (and
I would add gender and life) are highly debated topics in the Italian
Academia and society. Our students have started being more conscious
about these matters; they gather in groups, associations and movements
to discuss and learn more about gender-related topics. For some of us,
this is a great success, since we have been working hard on raising stu-
dents’ awareness as far as these matters are concerned.
Gender sensitivity has become a fundamental aspect in contemporary
education, generally speaking, and it is even more significant in transla-
tion training where more than one culture is involved. However, gender
issues are not always easy to introduce and discuss in class owing to the
social values they are linked to and because they have long been consid-
ered taboos. For this, training translators might be considered a unique
opportunity to take the ‘shame-veil’ off gender and gender-related issues
through reflection and analysis. It can also help to bring to light h
idden
meanings and lexical choices, thus raising the students’ awareness on
these topics, strengthening their ethical value, and increasing their
gender-sensitivity, which, in turn, will become a lens through which
they can look at the whole world.
Starting from the lexical level, translators-to-be face the challenge
of finding new lexical items, especially when translating from a culture
where gender-related issues are no longer a problem to a culture where
they are considered a problem.
Drawing on all this, the research project agenda focused on the train-
ing and not on the final product. The first phase of the research was
class observation and TAP.
Having already been trained in translation, though at a lower level,
students were already perfectly able to apply the basic translation
19
strategies, such as those related to direct and oblique translation (Vinay

and Darbelnet 1958/2000). They were also confident in using the
in-depth reading technique with questions.
For the course, two corpora of newspaper and magazine articles and
editorials, over a time span of five years (2009–2014) were collected
and investigated using AntConc. The corpora included also interviews.
Given the contrastive nature of the research, the two corpora were in
English and Italian. The search terms I used to collect my corpora were:
gender, teoria gender (gender theory)‚6 omosessuale (homosexual), gay,
lesbica (lesbian).
For convenience’s sake, only the newspaper and magazine article cor-
pora were used as tools of reference and investigation in class. Students
were given newspaper and magazine articles to translate from English
into Italian.
Students were asked to read the articles thoroughly and to high-
light the possible problems. They were also asked to list the problems
according to their nature; that is, identifying them as lexical, syntacti-
cal, cultural, or other. They were also told to identify the text types and
their functions, and account for the translation strategies they could use
according to the text type. Translation and text typology identification
are strictly bound; for this reason, they were also asked to elicit and list
the text type features they had considered. In this way, it was possible to
double-check their knowledge in text typology.
After the reading session, each student was asked to present the prob-
lems s/he had found, and to classify them according to the suggested
categories. The TAP was applied to this part of the research together
with the observation of the class, for which a checklist was devised.
Most of the students reported problems and classified them as
follows:
– 45% lexical problems

– 15% syntactical problems
– 37% cultural problems (which include those concerning the differ-
ence in newspaper article construction between the English and the
Italian culture)
– 3% other problems, among which was badly written texts, space con-
straints and so on.
20
F. Vigo
From the analysis following TAP, it was clear that nearly all the students
had employed some questions to identify the type of problems they had
encountered.
The questions were approximately:
(a) “what nature [lexical, structural, morphological, etc.] is the

problem?”;
(b) “Can we understand what we are reading?” or “Do we understand
the words we are reading?”
and
1. What kind of text is it?

2. What is its function?
3. Who are the addressees?
4. Are there special constraints? (e.g., space constraints).
All the questions referred broadly to linguistic issues. What the stu-
dents seemed to find reassuring in the problem-solving process was cate-
gorizing the problem in linguistic terms. What they seemed to maintain
was that if the problem was of a linguistic nature, it could be solved
by means of the tools they had and the strategies they knew. Moreover,
some students went back to the corpus to better understand the use of a
term or a sentence.
Since TAP is an individual activity, I decided to complete it
through observation. I chose four ‘observers’ among the students.
They did not participate to the training but were in charge of observ-
ing their fellow students’ behaviours. I carried out my own obser-
vation as well. The student/observers were asked to take notes of
interactions, topics, spontaneous creation of groups, monothematic or
multi-thematic discussion groups and possible conflicts on the check-
list provided.
The aftermaths of the observation confirmed and completed the out-
comes of TAP. Students drew on their linguistic and metalinguistic com-
petence in order to solve the problems; they looked for help on behalf of
their partner students with reference to issues that they had previously
21
categorized according to some linguistic features or they relied on the

corpora. When the problems were not merely linguistic—that is, when
they could not be listed under one of the available linguistic categories—
they were not clearly presented, nor were the students able to find ques-
tions that could help them address their non-linguistic problem.
TAP came into play again since students were asked to explain what
the nature of their problems were and why they were not able to solve
their problems.
Again, TAP results were analyzed and integrated with the obser-
vation. Most problems were related to the translation of terms strictly
linked to gender and sexuality, such as same-sex, lesbian, gay rights, the
position of ‘homosexual’ as an adjective, cisgender, and queer, to name
but a few.
Students recounted that they could understand the texts in English,
they could summarize them and answer some questions about them but
they could not translate them convincingly.
As for “the position of ‘homosexual’ as an adjective,” for example,
they said that the problem was not lexical nor syntactical; the problem
was the way the term was used, its connotative value and the additional
derogatory value it would have acquired in the Italian translation. The
article was about a fire and one of the alleged responsible people was
identified as “the homosexual boy.” During TAP, the student in charge
of that article said he felt responsible for the description of the per-
son, since he found that the adjective was too ‘heavy’ in Italian for the
prejudice that still existed and for the several campaigns against gender
matters as opposed to the more traditional good family ones that were
going on in that period. Both TAP and observation showed how he was
looking for the ‘real value’ of the adjective in English. He referred to the
corpus and then asked for help. His ethical quality came into play.
Similarly, the students who had problems with ‘cisgender,’ ‘queer’
and ‘same-sex’ reported being incapable of finding a satisfactory way to
translate them into Italian. For ‘cisgender,’ students maintained that in
Italian there was no such ‘concept’ so it was impossible for them to say
it. As for ‘queer,’ the student said she did not want to use the English
term, because in English it was not a synonym of homosexual and
gay as it often was in Italian, and since the difference in meaning was
22
F. Vigo
relevant for the article she did not want to be responsible for hiding a
possible meaning and, therefore, hiding some information. Again, her
ethical quality came into play.
To solve these problems, the new combined framework was used.
Students were encouraged to create mind maps starting from the term
that caused them problems. Initially, they started looking for synonyms,
as expected, but soon moved on to terms that were conceptually similar
to their problematic one but could not be used in the text. The text was
no longer their starting and reference point; they had gone beyond it to
look at a wider scope. They went on paradigmatically searching for con-
notations, figurative language, periphrasis and the like. They formulated
new questions, which were no longer related to the text and its linguis-
tic level but to the problematic issue related to real life.
TAP revealed how the students shifted from questions concerning
the text and what was possible for the text to questions related more
generally to language use in social reality or to what kind of influence
their lexical choices could have had. They never mentioned ethics nor
accountability with reference to them, but their behaviours and their
reasoning were of a purely ethical nature.
Once the mind map was created, the choice of the term to be used
was made using CDA tools. Students, in fact, applied some CDA ana-
lytical categories like those related to processes, overlexicalization,
contrasting pairs and actors to the words they had found. Later, they
double-checked them against their text and investigated the corpus.
In most cases, the creation of the mind map reassured the students,
who ultimately managed to find a possible solution.
TAP revealed how there was a change in the degree of the students’
awareness with reference to those topics and, more importantly, in their
attitudes towards them, which affected the way they behaved in society.
The observation showed how they started thinking about their role into
society when they had to choose between one term/phrase and another.
At the end of the course, in addition to traditionally assessing the stu-
dents, I required them to answer some questions with reference to the
course. My aim was to check whether they felt at ease with the method-
ology used, whether they found it effective and useful and whether they
23
would plan to use it again. I also asked them to list strengths and weak-
nesses in relation to the method.
Even though some students complained about the amount of work
they were asked to deal with and to undertake, most of them found the
method rewarding and useful beyond class requirements. They felt they
had done something for their professional life that was not merely ‘a
course.’
The framework combining CDA and CL proved productive, even
though its exploitation needs to be better organized with reference to
time and group activity especially.
4 Conclusion
My initial claim was that training translators may become a wider kind
of training with reference to gender and sexuality, and that a more com-
plex framework of analysis, which forces trainees to go beyond the lexis
and access a deeper cognitive level, may also prove to be a perfect tool
for expanding their awareness and comprehension in relation to some
matters, such as gender and sexuality. This kind of training might be
able to modify the trainee’s stance towards gender and sexuality, thus
developing a more positive attitude towards these issues that could, ulti-
mately, transcend the training itself.
As far as trainees’/translators’ accountability is concerned, the after-
math of my investigation shows how references to the ethical layer arise
when students leave the purely linguistic level to approach the broader
social level. This corroborates my assumption that training translators
has a significant ethical force and link to accountability.
The outcomes of my small-scale research project confirm my claim
and grant translation an active role in raising awareness as far as gender-
related issues are concerned. Including gender-related issues within the
curriculum leads also to an increasing demand on behalf of the students
to investigate those issues, which, in turn, will make their presence
unmarked and institutionally more accepted. As a consequence, possible
institutional hostility towards them will decrease.
24
F. Vigo
At the same time, however, to enable teaching that is broader in

scope and more in-depth, classroom activities and time need to be
organized more productively.
Notes
1. According to Langacker (1986, p. 4) a domain “can be any sort of con-
ceptualization: a perceptual experience, a concept, a conceptual complex,
an elaborate knowledge system, and so forth”.
2. For CL, every communication act implies universal Idealized Cognitive
Models (ICMs) and schema, which help our understanding and the cre-
ation of new concepts.
3. Risku maintains: “What makes cognitive translation research cognitive is the
fact that it tries to look ‘behind’ the observable processes and, when doing
so, refers to certain cognitive scientific concepts or approaches as a frame-
work (which can thus be confirmed or disproved). Consequently, cognitive
approaches focus clearly on the people and processes involved in transla-
tion and employ a primarily descriptive—as opposed to a normative—
mode of research, applying various empirical and experimental research
designs” (2013, p. 1).
4. A shift occurs in the cognitive approach to translation, the attention is
no longer placed on learners or occasional translators, but on profession-
als, whose actions are being categorized in an operational manner. As
already mentioned, for a satisfactory picture of the cognitive approaches
to translation, refer to Risku (2013).
5. In the 1980s, Paul Chilton drew from mathematics the notion of mor-
phism to explain his combined use of CL and CDA in his analysis of
political discourse. What he proposed is a perfect example of how the
two approaches can be combined for analytical reasons.
6. Teoria gender (gender theory) is not a philosophical issue but rather how
Italian newspapers have started calling whatever is related to gender. It is
mostly used in education by parents and associations who are scared of
what may happen to their kids if the ‘traditional’ values are destroyed. As
a phrase, it was coined at the end of the 1990s to criticize all the studies
and articles that focused on gender matters, which started to bloom in
those years in Italy. Those studies are depicted as dangerous since they
are alleged to have a secret plan of destruction of the traditional family
25
and of the natural social order. Currently, it is used to oppose feminist

and LGBTI movements.
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3
Parameters, Thresholds and Liminal
Spaces: Designing a Course on Sex,
Gender and Translation
Pauline Henry-Tierney
1 Introduction
Translating literature that seeks to transgress boundaries, specifically
in its articulations of gender identity and sexuality, can be extremely
challenging for a translator on both a professional and personal level.
As José Santaemilia (2009) discusses, translating sex-related language
does not simply involve linguistic or grammatical components but more
broadly encompasses aesthetic, pragmatic, ideological and cultural val-
ues too. Characterized as a ‘highly sensitive’ area in linguistic and cul-
tural transfer, the translation of sex constitutes “a powerful index of the
translator’s linguistic-cultural competence, prejudices, taboos or ideo-
logical assumptions” (Santaemilia 2005, p. 119). While these assertions
are pertinent considerations for the profile of any literary translator,
P. Henry-Tierney (*) 
School of Modern Languages, Newcastle University,
Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
28
P. Henry-Tierney
what further implications must we consider when this literary trans-

lator is a university student, namely, an individual who is on both an
educational journey and, potentially, at a crucial stage in their own per-
sonal journey that encompasses an exploration of their own sexuality
and gender identity? To address this question, in this chapter, I will out-
line the challenges and opportunities I have encountered in designing
and delivering a research-led module that places these exact exigencies
upon students through the translation of contemporary women’s writ-
ing in French. The challenges of reading, discussing and translating
transgressive texts1 will pose both challenges and opportunities for the
institution, the educator and the student as I will delineate in the three
sections of this study. Firstly, I will explore the institutional parameters
placed upon a course that, by its very nature, seeks to overstep bound-
aries. Thereafter, I will focus on the potential implications of introduc-
ing students to a new arena of ideological theory and practice, namely
the confluence of gender, sexuality and translation, which up until this
point will have been discrete areas of academic enquiry in their educa-
tional trajectory. I will frame this discussion through the lens of Mayer
and Land’s (2003) idea of threshold concepts, whereby the acquisition
of a gender and sexuality conscious awareness of the translation pro-
cess can be transformative, integrative and potentially irreversible for
the student. Finally, I will outline the intrinsic value of incorporating
digital technology into this course. Specifically, I will discuss the role
that online discussion boards will play in creating a liminal space, both
interactive and supportive, which students can use to articulate their
encounters with gender and sexual alterity through translation.
2 Contexts
When the opportunity arose to design a research-led, final-year under-
graduate BA module at my institution, Newcastle University, in the
UK, I decided that a specialist course in literary translation closely
related to my own research expertise, namely translating gender and
sexuality in contemporary women’s writing in French, would be
an apt choice and one that would create meaningful synergies with
3 Parameters, Thresholds and Liminal Spaces …
29
existing module options. The French section in the School of Modern

Languages has a strong contemporary profile and, in terms of its lit-
erary focus, offers modules such as Introduction to French literature,
French Caribbean literature and Contemporary Life Writing in French.
Students studying French language will encounter translation through-
out their course of study, both informally as a linguistic exercise and
in a more structured manner, through a final year optional module in
interpreting and translation. In addition, Newcastle University offers
a specialist degree pathway—a BA in Modern Languages, Translation
and Interpreting—in which students are trained, according to industry
standards, to enable them to pursue careers as professional interpret-
ers and translators upon graduation. My new module, entitled, ‘From
Experimental to Explicit: Translating Women’s Writing in French,’
which ran for the first time in the academic year 2017–2018, sits at the
confluence of these two fields of enquiry, offering a bridge between the
study of literature and the practice of translation.
The learning outcomes I set for this module can be divided into
knowledge-based and skill-based outcomes. Regarding the former, upon
successful module completion, students will have developed a knowl-
edge of the various trends in women’s writing in French from post 1968
to present day; a good understanding of core theoretical concepts in
gender-conscious approaches to the translation of women’s writing in
French; an ability to argue knowledgeably for or against specific transla-
tion choices, and an ability to evaluate the work of their own and other
translators on an informed basis. In terms of skills gained, students will
develop improved skills in reading literary texts in French, improved
skills in translating literary texts from French into English, an ability to
work both independently and in groups, an ability to think and argue
critically and coherently, the capacity to present information in a con-
vincing and accessible manner and an ability to write clearly and effec-
tively at a high level of intellectual competence in English.
In terms of structure, this is a twelve-week, single semester, optional
module comprised of a weekly two-hour lecture and a weekly one-hour
translation workshop. While the first hour of the lecture slot retains a
more traditional format, the second hour is more interactive in nature,
placing greater emphasis on the students’ own responses to the texts
30
P. Henry-Tierney
to be studied, engaging students through group discussions and Q&A

sessions on the weekly set theoretical reading. The weekly translation
workshop allows the students a creative, constructive and reflective
place to develop their competencies as literary translators. In terms of
the demographic composition of this first cohort, there were 29 stu-
dents enrolled on the module, 27 of whom were final year undergrad-
uate students and two who were Erasmus students. All students were
either native speakers of English or French, with the ratio of women to
men being six to one.
3 Parameters
As the module title encapsulates, this course is specifically concerned
with the changing modalities of women’s writing and its translation,
spanning the experimental feminist writing from France and Quebec
in the late 1970s and early 1980s from writers such as Hélène Cixous,
Louky Bersianik and Nicole Brossard, through to women writers of
the 1990s, including Annie Ernaux, Virginie Despentes and Marie
Darrieussecq, who focus on topoi including the body, trauma and vio-
lence and finishing with the ‘explicit,’ namely the post-millennial trend
in women’s writing in French, particularly in the genre of autofiction,2 in
which writers such as Catherine Millet, Nelly Arcan and Emma Becker
articulate, in a candid manner, representations of women’s gendered,
sexual and corporeal lived experiences. As Shirley Jordan intimates, this
new wave of women’s writing is characterized by its “meticulous obser-
vation of bodies” with an ‘overwhelming insistence on sexual experience’
(2006, p. 8). While it could be argued that much of the post-1968 wom-
en’s writing has engaged with similar topoi, it is the explicit nature and
range of sexual experiences described that pushes this writing further
into the transgressive. In terms of its translation, as Luise von Flotow has
commented in relation to the translation of experimental feminist writ-
ing, feminist translators’ approach to translation “has appropriated and
adapted many of the techniques and theories that underlie the writing
it translates” (1991, p. 74). As I will discuss in the forthcoming section,
while the translation of linguistically experimental writing is important
31
for introducing students to the concept of how questions of gender are

bound up with language, it is the translation of sexually explicit writing
that I will discuss here in relation to institutional parameters.
In accordance with Faculty guidelines, any pedagogic material that
may be deemed to be of a sensitive nature must be flagged to students
on all preliminary module literature. As such, the module flyer (for use
at the module selection fair), the module outline form and the module
booklet all contain a warning advising students of the explicit nature
of the course content; if they think they may be affected by this, then
they are advised to make an alternative module choice. In addition,
students have a three-week grace period, whereby they are permitted
to change their module selection. Of the 29 students who enrolled in
this first cohort, only one student opted out, for reasons completely
unconnected to this issue. In advance of each class, I also inform stu-
dents of the exact nature of the transgressive topic in the text we will be
translating. As Lowe and Jones indicate, “almost any topic can become
sensitive if emotional responses are raised” (2010, p. 2). As mentioned,
post-millennial women’s writing in French has a propensity for explicit
articulations of sexual experiences, encompassing a range of desiring
positions, yet while much focus has been on the articulation of wom-
en’s bodily pleasures, more traumatic aspects of sexuality such as rape,
incest and prostitution are also explored by these women writers.
According to a recent poll carried out by the campaign group, Revolt
Sexual Assault, more than three in five students have been a victim of
sexual assault or harassment while at university (Busby 2018). In addi-
tion to these graphic depictions of sexual experiences, these women
writers also describe the complexities of corporeality and gender identity
through their exploration of issues such as anorexia, body dysmorphia
and transgenderism. According to Ulrike Schmidt (2012), one in ten
adults in the UK will experience some form of eating disorder during
their lifetime. Reading about such issues may, therefore, be a topic close
to home for certain students, yet as Jessica Cless and Briana Goff (2017,
p. 27) outline in their study on teaching traumatic material in Higher
Education settings, student reactions to trauma can occur regardless of
trauma history, with secondary traumatic stress occurring from sim-
ply hearing about another person’s trauma. In order to manage such
32
P. Henry-Tierney
responses, they advocate the implementation of numerous strategies

(including biobehavioural, affective, cognitive, relational and spiritual)
in the teaching classroom. As Carello and Butler (2014) point out, this
must be accompanied by an acknowledgement on the educator’s part of
the possible existence of such trauma histories amongst the cohort and,
above all, the responsibility of creating a safe space within the learning
environment. In addition to the trigger warnings printed on all course
documentation, for this module, creating a safe zone also extends to
ensuring that support services available to students (both university-
based as well as national organizations and charities) are clearly indi-
cated. As I will explore in the third section of this chapter, I consider
the incorporation of digital technologies to be a useful extension to
the creation of safe space through their informative and supportive
functions.
While it could be easier simply to shirk away from such transgres-
sive material in the teaching classroom, as has been argued, “teach-
ing sensitive topics has a pedagogical value in raising consciousness
about important phenomena” (Dalton 2010, pp. 5–6). Teaching
such texts is also important from a feminist pedagogical perspective.
French writer Marguerite Duras describes women’s writing as “an
organic, translated writing … translated from blackness, from dark-
ness.” She continues, saying that, “when women write they translate
this darkness.” (Husserl-Kapit and Duras 1975, p. 425). Transgressing
boundaries by articulating what has hitherto remained unsaid about
women’s lived experiences, these women writers are staking out new
textual terrain to affirm their subjecthood. Therefore, silencing their
voices within the translation classroom would work as an act of sub-
jugation, pushing them further into the state of obfuscation, which
Duras has warned against. Furthermore, as Nolan and Oerton (2010)
comment, the use of ‘real’ explicit material in the classroom, which,
I would argue, could include autofictional texts, is likely to produce
strong reactions amongst students, whether these be arousal, amuse-
ment, distress or disgust. They advocate that these reactions can be
challenged and can prove to be pivotal in classroom discussions, since
they provide “useful opportunities to explore and unravel their emo-
tional responses and how these link to different theoretical positions
33
and perspectives” (2010, p. 10). While reading and discussing such

explicit texts will invariably invoke such a diversity of responses as
Nolan and Oerton attest, I would argue that the act of translating
these texts brings with it another set of challenges for the student that
can be considered transformative, as I shall now explore.
4 Thresholds
As delineated by Jan Meyer and Ray Land (2003), a threshold con-
cept can be understood as a new vista, namely the opening up of a new
mode of conceptualization that is essential for the learner’s progression.
They describe this process as being “transformative” in the sense that it
has the ability to alter a learner’s internal view of subject matter, subject
landscape, or even world view (2003, p. 1). They add that the compre-
hension of particular politico-philosophical insights, including feminist
theory, can also lead to a transformation of personal identity or subjec-
tivity. Secondly, they consider a threshold concept to be “irreversible,”
meaning that the new perspective elicited by the acquisition of this new
knowledge is difficult to dismiss, highlighted, in part, by its “integra-
tive” function, namely, its nature of interrelatedness with other con-
ceptual ideas and its “bounded” dimension—that is, its bordering with
other threshold concepts. Lastly, they explain how threshold concepts
can be potentially “troublesome” due to the differing modes of knowl-
edge and means of acquisition (2003, pp. 5–12). Here, I argue that
focussing specifically on issues of gender and sexuality in the translation
classroom constitutes pertinent examples of the introduction of thresh-
old concepts within the learning environment.
Firstly, in terms of situating learning at the confluence of gender
and translation, this module presents the first opportunity in stu-
dents’ educational trajectory for them to study these two domains in
correlation. While students may have been exposed to theories of gen-
der in previous literature and cultural modules taken at earlier stages
in the School of Modern Languages, or in other discipline areas for
Combined Honours students, a base knowledge of gender theory in
not necessarily a given. Likewise, for those students studying for the
34
P. Henry-Tierney
specialized BA in Translation and Interpreting, the focus is on profes-

sionalization and a gender awareness in the translation process is not
necessarily a pedagogical priority. For these reasons, introducing gen-
der consciousness into the translating classroom functions as a thresh-
old concept, whereby students’ realization that questions of gender and
identity are intrinsically linked with issues of language for these women
writers, is potentially transformative for their development as literary
translators. To illustrate my point, during the first of the weekly trans-
lation workshops, I used an article from the blog section of Le Monde
(2014), entitled ‘Le français n’aime pas le genre féminin’ (‘The French
language does not like the feminine gender’ [my translation]), which
looks at both the grammatically masculine and feminine forms of cer-
tain words in the French language and exposes the latent misogyny in
the terms relating to women, which work to denigrate and sexually
objectify them. A pertinent example being the following: “Un profes-
sionnel est un homme compétent, une professionnelle est une pros-
tituée” (Le Monde 2014). As the article highlights, when declined in the
masculine form, the term ‘professional’ means a competent man, yet in
its feminine form in French, ‘professional’ creates associations between
women and prostitution. This serves as a point of departure to intro-
duce students to the importance of language in the construction of our
social realities, thereby enabling them to understand why experimental
feminist writers such as Nicole Brossard and Louky Bersianik sought
to disrupt existing language by creatively intervening via the invention
of feminist neologisms and the recuperation of previously denigrated
words used to describe women’s bodies, thus subverting what they con-
sidered to be the existing patriarchal power structures at work within
conventional language. From this basis, students’ understanding of var-
ious aspects of feminist translation theory presented during the weekly
lectures becomes all the more tangible since it is anchored not only in
an awareness of how feminist translators have chosen to echo feminist
writers’ critique of the French language by showing the ways in which
the English language can be equally sexist, but also, students’ under-
standing of feminist translation theory is cemented through their own
practice in the translation workshop. By translating selected excerpts
from these texts, students must interrogate for themselves the ways
35
in which language, gender and power are intertwined. As the transla-

tion workshops have demonstrated, translating a text in a different
cultural and political moment from when it was originally translated
can be revelatory of the way in which it highlights contemporary soci-
etal issues pertaining to questions of gender. One such example came
from a student who chose to translate a line from Louky Bersianik’s
L’Euguélionne (1976) with an inventive visual translation to critique
the current misogyny she sees at work within the contemporary polit-
ical arena. Bersianik denounces French grammar rules, which dictate
that the masculine gender will overrule the presence of grammatically
feminine nouns, she says: “Même un objet inanimé masculine l’em-
porte sur l’être humain féminin” (1976, p. 226).3 The student chose
to translate the verbal phrase ‘l’emporte sur’ with the verb ‘trump,’ and
typed it in the font Stymie Extra Bold. This is the typeface initially
used by architect Der Scutt to produce the gold lettering that adorns
the Trump Tower in New York City, and which has since become syn-
onymous with President Trump’s brand identity. By combining both
linguistic and visual word play, the student brought a renewed contem-
porary feminist perspective to Bersianik’s critique of phallogocentric
dominance.
Meyer and Land’s argument for the “transformative” potential of this
threshold concept of bringing gender into the translation classroom is
clearly substantiated by students’ translation practice, as the example
above illustrates. The “integrative” dimension of this threshold concept
is seen in the way in which a gender conscious awareness has perme-
ated other aspects of certain students’ academic terrain. Concrete exam-
ples being the gender-conscious approach (not initiated on my part)
that some students from the module adopted in their translation of a
journalistic text for a separate, generalist translation module for which
I teach. Secondly, several students queried which translation strategy
to employ during their collective work on an extra-curricular project
in order to avoid introducing gender normativity in the documentary
they were subtitling. The porosity of their gender conscious approach to
diverse translation tasks highlighted the way in which students began to
consider the interrelatedness of a gender awareness and their translative
practice more globally.
36
P. Henry-Tierney
Translating transgressive articulations of genders and sexualities,

including graphic sexual experiences can also be considered as trans-
formative but, arguably, in a much more affective and personal way.
The task of translating texts that vividly depict both bodily pleasures
from a range of desiring positions, as well as more traumatic forms of
lived experience such as rape, incest and anorexia, will involve, to some
degree, an encounter with alterity for the student. While there may be
some form of either direct or indirect identification with the form of
lived experience being textualized, it nevertheless involves a different
set of circumstances and different subjectivities. Yet, the use of the aut-
ofictional, first-person subject pronoun ‘je’ in many of these women’s
texts means that the student, must, in turn, adopt an ‘I’ in their trans-
lation. This temporary overlapping of subjectivities during the transla-
tion process, namely the student translator’s own ‘I’ and the adopted ‘I’
of the translation, do not exist discretely but rather become enmeshed
through oppositional processes of recognition and disidentification. For
students for whom the articulation of lived experience carries personal
resonance, the challenge stems from the task of differentiating between
one’s own subjectivity and that of the Other, or deciding whether such
a process of disidentification is even possible, or whether one’s own life
experiences cannot be separated from translation practice, whether this
be evident in the tone created or the specific words chosen when trans-
lating. In this sense, translating sensitive topics carries an emotional
weight, particularly for those who have lived through similar situations.
For students who do not identify with a particular articulation of lived
experience, the acknowledgement of this alternate subjectivity through
the process of translation can also be difficult. Finding the words, in
your mother tongue, to describe the experiences of a body, of a sexu-
ality or even of a way of thinking that is not one’s own can be, to use
Meyer and Land’s term, “troublesome”, since it relates to the acquisition
of “alien” knowledge (2003, p. 7). A pertinent example of this is seen
in translating an extract related to anorexia from Nelly Arcan’s Putain
(2001). Students found the narrator’s derogatory remarks about other
women, as well as her complicity in perpetuating patriarchal frame-
works of reference by validating certain stereotypical images of women
through her anorexic practices, both distressing and disagreeable. Some
37
also noted the uncomfortable position that having to adopt the narra-
tor’s ‘I’ through translation entailed, commenting on feeling ill at ease
in their own skin. This very explicit articulation of the affective aspects
of translating highlight it as being a bodily process.
Linked with this idea of translation involving the body comes the
performative dimension of translation. As Sandra Bermann states, trans-
lation is “a verbal play in which both a ‘me’ and a ‘not-me’ take active
roles” (2014, p. 285). As Bermann notes, Judith Butler’s theory of per-
formativity (1990) can be usefully applied to the process of translation.
Butler’s central treatise about the inherent performativity of gender and
the way in which it involves the body, namely through its “repeated
stylization” (p. 44) in order to give the appearance of substance or nat-
uralness, relates specifically to the way in which the performance of
translation also involves the body. A way in which this is enacted in the
translation classroom is through one of the tasks I set students to trans-
late an excerpt from Nicole Brossard’s Sous La Langue (1987). A work
of prose poetry that articulates pleasures of lesbian desire, translating
some of this text proves to be a useful exercise in introducing students to
mimetic translation, since sounds are privileged over semantic content,
yet, perhaps more importantly, this translation also affords students a fur-
ther encounter with alterity. Considering that the class comprises individ-
uals of differing genders, as well as, presumably, a spectrum of sexualities,
some form of othering will take place as their subjectivities become
implicated in the translation process. As this text was originally intended
to be read aloud, I also gave students the optional choice of recording
their own spoken version of their translation of the excerpt. More than
half of the class completed this optional task and sent me their record-
ing, which I then compiled into a collective performative piece of audio.
During subsequent class discussions, students reflected on how this task
encouraged them not only to think more carefully about how sounds cre-
ate specific meanings, but also, they discussed the sense of responsibil-
ity they felt as translators to convey another individual’s articulations of
desire in both fitting words and a suitable vocal tone. This added oral
dimension to the translation process underlined the performative nature
of the task and cemented the centrality of the body, in this case, via the
implication of the students’ own voices, to the translation act.
38
P. Henry-Tierney
A final important point to explore in relation to the idea of the con-

fluence of sexuality and translation functioning as a threshold concept
to open up new vistas of subjective alterity to learners is linked to the
learning environment—namely, the translation workshop. As Kelly
Washbourne advocates, the workshop is a worthy model for literary
translation pedagogy, since it enacts “a true ethics of otherness toward
participants and authors” (2013, p. 60). The dialogism of the transla-
tion workshop, fostered through students’ exposure to the differing
subjectivities of their peers and how those differing subjectivities are
implicated differently (or similarly) in the common goal of translating a
given text on a weekly basis, can be transformative. The plurivocality of
the translation classroom will invariably mean different interpretations
and responses to this transgressive women’s writing, as well as different
approaches to its translation. The collaborative potential of the trans-
lation workshop affords students new horizons of what Washbourne
terms “other-awareness” (p. 60) and which he considers to be a form of
both intimate and social knowledge. This practice falls in line with the
shift that Sonia Colina and Lawrence Venuti (2016) perceive in transla-
tion teaching from a positivist to a constructivist epistemology and from
teacher- to student-oriented approaches, placing renewed value on the
translator and translatorial processes. The dynamic, collaborative space
of the translation workshop opens students up to the existence of a
multiplicity of subjectivities both in the text and in the classroom, thus
substantiating the irreversibility of this threshold concept, since learn-
ers’ realization that translation is always mediated through some form of
subjective agency is a knowledge that will continually inform and influ-
ence their practice as translators.
5 Liminal Spaces
The final aspect I wish to discuss in relation to designing and teaching a
module on translating gender and sexuality, concerns the incorporation
of digital technologies to create an interactive and supportive space to
facilitate student learning. Specifically, I will discuss the role of the insti-
tution’s virtual learning environment Blackboard and the role played by
39
integrated online discussion boards on the module’s site. I designate this

space as ‘liminal,’ in the sense that it exists as an in-between space, both
temporally and physically, two factors that are important in terms of its
purpose. Firstly, as has been discussed, the translation of texts dealing
with sensitive topics can evince manifestations of both first-hand and
secondary traumatic stress and while faculty-directed measures are in
place to ensure that any student disclosures are handled with care, stu-
dents are in no way expected or encouraged to disclose such personal
details in the classroom. Yet, acknowledging the potential impact of
reading, discussing and translating transgressive texts on students, the
functions of the virtual learning environment allow me to provide stu-
dents with access to support services, whenever they need them. In a
‘useful links’ section on the Blackboard site, I have provided weblinks
to both institutional support services as well as national organizations
and charities that support individuals affected by some of the issues
raised by the course content including Newcastle University’s Student
Wellbeing Service; Beat, the UK’s eating disorder charity; and the local
Tyneside and Northumberland Rape Crisis, to name some examples.
In addition to using the virtual learning environment for support-
ive purposes, I have incorporated discussion boards into the module
to encourage further interactivity and peer-to-peer learning. Largely
self-directed, yet overseen by me as the educator and with my input
as a fellow translator, the discussion boards provide students with a
space to discuss both the French texts and their own translation strate-
gies. Since students do not read and translate an entire text every week
but rather, a textual extract, the online discussion board allows them
the space to converse more fully on a particular text or author. It also
allows me an opportunity to provide further details, supplementary to
my exposition of the authors and their texts in lectures, such as links
to newspaper reviews and author interviews. In a sense, the discussion
board functions as a virtual book club, allowing deeper understanding
and discussion of the literature being studied. Currently, participation
in discussion boards is voluntary and does not count towards any form
of assessment, meaning that certain students make extensive use of it
while others are less active. For those who are actively engaged, a further
form of interaction is discussing translation choices for specific terms
40
P. Henry-Tierney
in advance of the weekly translation workshop. While this encourages

co-participatory learning, it has also been pivotal for dealing with trans-
gressive texts. Students have commented that discussing their transla-
tions for graphic depictions of sexual experiences can seem daunting in
the classroom setting, yet these pre-class online discussions are impor-
tant for boosting students’ confidence, safe in the knowledge that their
peers have also opted for a translation that echoes the same explicitness
of the source text. In summary, these pre-class discussions lay down
the foundations for fruitful discussions in the translation workshop
and provide me, as an educator, with interesting points of departure to
encourage students to reflect on their translation practice.
6 Conclusion
In this chapter, I have outlined the various challenges and opportunities
I have encountered in designing and delivering a module that explores
the intersections of translation, gender and sexuality. As an educator,
it is inspiring to see students becoming passionate about a field of aca-
demic enquiry that forms the basis of my own research interests and
there is a clear reciprocity of knowledge exchange as students bring
new perspectives and fresh insights to current academic debates. While
introducing sensitive topics into the classroom can seem both daunt-
ing and challenging in the way that it brings the professional and the
personal spheres into what can sometimes feel like uncomfortable con-
tact with one another, it is, nevertheless, an important and productive
practice, since it is through their encounters with alterity that learners
come to understand and acknowledge the Other. This is important not
only for their development as conscientious literary translators but also
for their personal development as individuals and the social relations
that shape, in the phenomenological sense, their ‘being’ in the world.
The framework of threshold concepts has been fruitfully applied to dis-
cuss the ways in which nurturing a conscious awareness of the impli-
cations of gender and sexuality in the translation classroom can be
41
transformative, integrative and irreversible for the student in their edu-

cational and personal journey to becoming a literary translator and
understanding the ways in which textually articulating representations
of gender and sexuality can have wider implications in terms of social,
political and power relations. The idea of these threshold concepts in
translation also being troublesome was raised in relation to the some-
times troubling aspects of intersubjective embodiment occasioned
by the translation process and highlighted the important correlations
between translation, performativity and the body. Finally, in an era
when online spaces can be increasingly threatening and predatory, I
have highlighted how, in an educational setting, these virtual spaces cre-
ate new opportunities for providing support and fostering deeper intel-
lectual interaction as well as chances for co-participatory learning. In
this study, I have been able to offer preliminary insights into my expe-
riences as an educator designing and delivering this course, yet as the
module is still in its infancy, more time will be required to reflect more
fully on the ways in which this course will mature. Beyond the scope
of this study were questions of assessment and student feedback, which
in a cyclical manner, will inform future iterations of both the structure
and rationale of the module. Furthermore, changing institutional and
literary parameters could also have a bearing upon the module. For
example, how would changes in Faculty directives concerning teaching
explicit material have an impact upon the module’s pedagogical tra-
jectory? Or, in what ways would new modalities in women’s writing,
in the coming years, inflect the course content? In terms of individual
learners, future cohorts, bringing their own set of lived experiences and
differing subjective agencies to the translation classroom will invaria-
bly alter and enrich the learning environment. In line with bell hooks’
feminist pedagogy, calling for the celebration of a teaching practice that
“enables transgressions—a movement against and beyond boundaries”
(1994, p. 12), this module will keep the idea of ‘transgression’ as its
defining principle, since it is through processes of transgression that we
open ourselves up to radical potential and possibilities on both an edu-
cational and subjective level.
42
P. Henry-Tierney
Notes
1. I am using the term ‘transgressive’ here in the Foucauldian sense,
whereby he understands transgression as a calling into question of lim-
its or thresholds. He considers that the reciprocity in the mutually con-
stituting and contesting dynamic between limit and transgression can
be understood as ‘tak[ing] the form of a spiral which no simple infrac-
tion can exhaust’ (1977, p. 35). Understanding transgression as an
infinite procedure of the pushing of the self towards the limit of where
there is no interpretation is central to this new trend in women’s writ-
ing in French which purposefully seeks to overstep textual boundaries
through candid articulations of women’s sexual, gendered and corporeal
experiences.
2. Autofiction is a term coined by Serge Doubrovksy in relation to his
novel Fils (1977) and can be defined as a genre which elides fiction with
reality, involving the speaking subject being co-extensive with the autho-
rial ‘I’. It can be understood as a narrative mode which flags itself as fic-
tional yet, at the same time, features a narrator whose autobiographical
details are similar, if not identical, to those of its author. As Alex Hughes
states, the disidentificatory nature of the genre ‘shields its practitioners
from the identifying, knowledge-seeking, would-be-classificatory, pow-
er-imbued lectorial gaze’ (1999, p. 113).
3. ‘Even a masculine inanimate object takes precedence over a female
human being’ [my translation]. NB I am not using the English trans-
lation, The Euguelion (1996) here to provide the back translation as the
feminist translator, Howard Scott, does not translate this sentence in his
text since he creates a different example to critique the gender inequali-
ties of the English language.
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nin/. Accessed 20 March 2018.
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49–66.
4
Social Action and Critical Consciousness
in the Socialization of Translators-to-Be:
A Classroom Experience
Robert Martínez-Carrasco
1 Situating Classroom Practices

The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) has shaken the foun-
dations of tertiary education, progressively re-modelling degree pro-
grammes, classroom methodologies, assessment, and even the role of
students and educators. Greater emphasis has been placed on employa-
bility and the procedural dimension of higher education, seeing degree
programmes as the platform where professionals-to-be acquire the rele-
vant competences demanded by the community of practice they aspire
to join upon graduation.
Under this paradigm, keeping communities of practice in mind calls
for specific yet dynamic learning contexts, “paying appropriate atten-
tion to the ‘actor-networks’ in which complex work activities are nego-
tiated” (Risku 2010, p. 105). In order to think and act as professionals,
students need to internalize the explicit and implicit norms that shape
R. Martínez-Carrasco (*) 
Department of Translation and Communication,
Jaume I University, Castellón de la Plana, Spain
46
R. Martínez-Carrasco
their profession, “advancing from ‘novice’, at the periphery of the com-

munity, to ‘expert’, at its centre” (González-Davies and Enríquez-Raído
2016, p. 8). Therefore, the way professionals-to-be find their author-
ity as ‘translators’ relies on “participating actively in the collectively
created values, norms and conventions of the translation community”
(Kiraly 2000).
When adopting the role of a professional translator during their educa-
tion—that is, when faced with real projects in the classroom—translators-
to-be “feel closer to the centre of the community” (Marco 2016, p. 37).
If the relevant links between professionals and other neighbouring
agents (authors, clients, agencies, market, rates, etc.) are similarly intro-
duced into the classroom, students will be exposed to the way “pro-
fessional translators are able to develop their flexibility, creativity
and sense of responsibility without losing touch with the real world”
(Risku, ibid.).
The use of authentic tasks and projects in contemporary education
scenarios is generally seen as an emancipatory, enactive, empowering
activity (Kiraly 2016; Risku 2016, p. 6), since it allows students to take
full responsibility for their own learning process and, at the same time,
to be exposed to the complexity and the problem-solving constraints a
professional translator will meet in the course of their career. It could be
argued that this conceptualization of knowledge and knowledge acqui-
sition reflects particular post-positivist epistemological understandings
of learning, whereby cognition “is not a process of ‘representing’ a real
world that is ‘out there’ waiting to be apprehended but, rather, is a pro-
cess of organizing and re-organizing one’s own subjective world of expe-
rience” (Sumara and Davis 1997, p. 409). In this context, knowledge
acquisition is anything but acquisition: it is a matter of re-contextual-
izing our perspective whenever our surrounding world offers new input
that contradicts our existing ideas. Individuals, therefore, do not pas-
sively receive knowledge. Instead, knowledge is built up through inter-
personal interaction, leading some to speak of cognition being socially
shared and stored—that is, “distributed in social, cultural, historical,
and institutional contexts” (Duffy and Cunningham 1996, pp. 8–12).
If, as has been argued, individuals cannot separate themselves from
what they know, it follows that all classroom discourse is inherently
4 Social Action and Critical Consciousness …
47
political (Sarroub and Quadros 2015, p. 252), even if lecturers may be

“largely unaware of their participation in the perpetuation of established
mindsets and practices” (Davis and Sumara 2003, p. 130). Indeed,
while the power of the ‘hidden curriculum’ has still not received enough
consideration in academia (Winter and Cotton 2012), acknowledging
the importance of classroom practices as a form of ideological produc-
tion and a reflection of power relations seems imperative in order to
widen the vision of future translators and allow them to come to terms
with the fact that translation is anything but an innocent activity (Baker
and Maier 2011, p. 4).
Fostering the critical consciousness of students creates a space where
power relations and privilege are properly understood and where stu-
dents are encouraged to engage in collective action based on social jus-
tice, equality and empowerment (McLaren 2009), a space that validates
multiple forms of expression where students learn, following Freire
(1970), “to read the word” as much as “to read the world.”
For students to become professionals in their field, Abdallah (2011,
p. 133) concludes, “they must be encouraged to question, challenge and
ultimately change those workplace practices that seem to them unfair,
i.e. unethical, and to become aware of the links between the social and
the political”. To achieve this, intersectional projects based on critical
pedagogy may be implemented “as a legitimate form of engagement to
develop learning models and hybrid spaces” (Scorza et al. 2013, p. 19),
a place where non-dominant narratives are presented as legitimate forms
of expression.
Far from “promoting passive reception of decontextualized content”
(Muro 2012, p. 4), translators-to-be need to be faced with the various
ethical implications and moral challenges that they may be confronted
with in the course of their career without relying blindly on context-less
codes of practice or abstract lists of dos and don’ts. The creation of mean-
ingful, collaborative, authentic classroom projects seems to fit the pur-
pose of generating the relevant affordances that enhance the critical
consciousness of translators-to-be. In order for agency to be applied
in self-directed ways, consistent use may be made of a number of tools
and platforms, included in the project below: e-learning collaboration
(emphasizing instructor-learner and learner-learner interactions); the
48
co-design of a learning environment according to the students’ needs;

the inclusion of self-defined learning goals in participatory contexts;
action research and learning, and so on (Washbourne 2014).
Service learning fulfils the epistemological and pedagogical require-
ments outlined above and allows translation students “to gain new
knowledge and competencies in an experiential learning process as
active service providers” (Barth et al. 2014, p. 74). Combining student
growth and community engagement (in our case, close collaboration
with a local LGBT+ organization), translation students are able to reflect
on the situated nature of language, representation, power asymmetries
and the ethics of translation, in a context where learning implies change
at personal, group and organizational level. Indeed, the project pre-
sented used service learning as a way to foster the holistic development
of our students, enhancing critical and systemic thought, reflection and
participation, problem solving, and the development of a strong deci-
sion-making framework.
2 Language, Representation
and Non-binarism
Bengoechea (2015, p. 8) reflects on first language acquisition as a pro-
cess in which women learn not to be mentioned and acknowledge this
lack of reference naturally. Patriarchal structures, she goes on to argue,
underpin our society, and so language conveys patriarchal tactics of
invisibility and exclusion. The very same assertion could be applied
to other groups of individuals at the “periphery” of reality (Vidal
Claramonte 2010), whose experiences and discourses are treated as
subversive or unacceptable and who are consistently excluded from the
unidirectional narratives that shape reality. As Foucault puts it (2016),
discourses are socially “controlled, selected, organized and redistributed”
such that what we consider true, conventional or acceptable constitutes
one of the rules of exclusion regarding discourse production.
This has a clear impact on the development of one’s social and indi-
vidual identity, since some individuals are provided with reference and
49
representation models they can identify with, while others—those at

the periphery—are constantly left underrepresented. The consequences
of this for the self-concept and the self-esteem of individuals are highly
significant, and, as Bengoechea highlights (ibid.), this results at times in
the development of an over-identity among some groups of individuals
and an under-identity in some other cases.
The idea that language is purely referential, innocent and aseptic is
an outdated perception in our discipline. Indeed, Barthes (2012 [1980])
speaks of the second order of signification and of how the apparently
direct referential link between language and reality is never direct or
clear. Baker (2006, p. 19) speaks of “socially shared representations” that
have an inherently homogenizing effect, in that “people’s behaviour is
ultimately guided by the stories they come to believe about the events
in which they are embedded.” An interesting point of discussion would
be why there is not (or has not been, to be more precise) much trans-
gression or subversion of this socially agreed norm; why these power
asymmetries between the centre and the periphery of reality have tra-
ditionally been internalized without much resistance. Bourdieu’s notion
of symbolic power seems to answer this question, and indeed explains,
through unconscious instances of cultural and social domination, why
society seems to accept a number of ideas and mental schemata as uni-
versal. These ‘universal’ schemata, rooted in asymmetric power relations,
result in the tacit assimilation of reality as shaped by some groups.
Language, and therefore translation, may be used to question the
status quo and oppose certain social beliefs and ideas, but only if the
translator is able to detect the different levels of signification and the
narratives (heteronormative and/or cisnormative, in our case) in their
text (Martínez-Carrasco and Frasquet 2015, p. 667). Translators need
to keep in mind that they have a privileged position since they can
access their source text, unintelligible for many, and their choices will
have a clear impact on their final text. While traditionally we have edu-
cated our translators to be invisible, to be a bridge or a mirror (to quote
some of the most recurrent metaphors in the profession), the truth is
that whenever translators assert that there is no ideology in their trans-
lation, what they are doing, arguably, is subscribing to mainstream
ideological practices. As House et al. acknowledge (2005, p. 4), some
50
circumstances, such as translation, bring to life certain identity traits of

individuals, hence the role, power and responsibility of translators in the
(at all times) conditioned and constrained process of text re-production.
Regarding gender and identity, it seems that the postmodern trans-
lation classroom is progressively incorporating gender awareness and
informed reflection on the power asymmetries that shape contemporary
discourses. The gender bias inherent in all texts poses particular chal-
lenges to translators, who need to juggle their own ethics and ideology,
that of their client, and that of their audience. In the Spanish case, for
example, the use of non-sexist language has lately gained unprecedented
momentum at the institutional level, and indeed all major institutions
have put forward guidelines, glossaries and overall strategies to avoid the
use of sexist language.
It may be argued that these recommendations, however well inten-
tioned, do not go far enough for the education of translators-to-be,
since enhancing gender awareness in the translation classroom goes
beyond the linguistic transposition of gendered words for gender-
inclusive equivalents. Deeper text relations and questions related to rep-
resentation and power imbalance need to be addressed, since transla-
tors are not just users of texts, but producers of texts, and only if they
are able to detect the mechanisms that shape discourse will they truly
be able to make informed translation decisions. It is not just a matter
of avoiding the androcentrism inherent in the prescriptive grammar
of grammatically gendered languages like Spanish or French, but of
understanding gender as culturally constructed through various social-
izing interactions; understanding the distinction between gender, sex,
and sexuality; and understanding the consequences of cisgenderism, for
instance, insofar as it delegitimizes people’s own designations and per-
ceptions of their bodies and genders.
Regarding genderqueerness, representation, and translation, which
is the object of the project presented below, one could argue that the
growing number of gender non-conforming individuals “who choose
to use pronouns other than those traditionally linked to maleness (he)
and femaleness (she), has made it clear that moving away from explicitly
gendered language provides more space for non-binary transgender and
queer people to express their identities” (Hord 2016). Yet, as the author
51
points out, this tends to be a fairly Anglocentric debate, especially since

languages with varying grammatical gender systems have “less space,
opportunity, ease and susceptibility” to escape heteropatriarchal domi-
nation. Indeed, Bengoechea (2015, p. 16) speaks of the tangible conse-
quences of non-binary representation and new textualities, mentioning,
for instance, the legal changes in Australia regarding the right of indi-
viduals to self-identify as M (male), F (female), or X (indeterminate/
intersex/unspecified).
The debate on non-binary representation tends to focus on neutral
pronouns. In 2003, Sweden, for instance, introduced a neutral pro-
noun to its language besides ‘he’ and ‘she’ (han/hon): hen. Yet, while
some welcome the fertile neological production of neutral representa-
tion, some voices in the transgender community regard the use of
neutral pronouns as a potential threat to their own identity, on the
grounds that they serve only to marginalize the trans community fur-
ther, suggesting “that the femaleness or maleness that many transgen-
der people work to cultivate is fake” (Hord, ibid.). Other debates on
gender-neutral pronouns centre on whether society as a whole, and not
just non-binary individuals, should use neutral pronouns, since if only
a minority group incorporated them there would be a risk of these pro-
nouns becoming socially inferior to the traditional he/she, establishing a
hierarchy.
In any case, the study and creation of gender-neutral pronouns is
nothing new. Indeed, Darr and Kibbey (2016) revisit the different pro-
posals put forward throughout history in order to substitute masculine
and feminine pronouns, including suggestions like zie/hir; ne/nem/nir/
nirs/; ve/ver/vis/vis/verself; ey/em/eir/eirs/eirself; ze/zir/zir/zirs/zirself;
xe/xem/xyr/xyrs/xemself, and so on. An interesting point these authors
highlight is that efforts were made to coin epicene pronouns as early as
the eighteenth century, even if the reason was linguistic efficiency rather
than queer inclusion or gender awareness.
Another widespread mechanism is the use of singular ‘they,’ selected
in 2015 as “word of the year” by the American Dialect Society. As I
have argued elsewhere (Martínez-Carrasco 2017, pp. 14–15), the use
of ‘they’ with a singular antecedent dates back to the fourteenth cen-
tury (Huddleston and Pullum 2002, pp. 493–494). Compared with
52
the ‘royal we,’ historical linguistic research shows evidence of the use of
a singular generic ‘they’ as early as Old English, while it was not until
1795 that a grammar text labelled singular ‘they’ as incorrect (Bodine
1975).
Spanish, as a grammatically gendered language, finds it harder to
represent non-binarism, and indeed many speakers opt for alternating
masculine and feminine pronouns, nouns, adjectives and determin-
ers depending on the context, the audience or the disposition of the
speaker. The neutral ending –e, replacing the canonical (and binary)
–o/–a endings in Spanish, is marginally used by a part of the non-
binary community (“elle está loque,” for instance, which translates as zie
is crazy ), but its use is far from mainstream and in fact most of the pop-
ulation are not even aware of its existence.
Another mechanism used to eliminate cisgenderism in language is the
use of symbols that replace the gendered endings in words: ‘nosotr*s,
nosotrxs’ (both of them non-gendered forms of ‘we’ in Spanish). While
the use of symbols does indeed offer some interesting possibilities and
expands the limits of language in favour of traditionally marginalized
discourses and identities, they present a significant drawback: they
cannot be said. The use of symbols within the non-binary community
only works in written discourse, which leaves its members in a difficult
position, a sort of a gender limbo, insofar as they cannot ‘be’ out loud
(Bengoechea 2015, p. 16). Whenever they express themselves verbally,
they still need to turn to the masculine or the feminine.
3 Implementing the Project

Building on these grounds, during the period between January and June
of 2017, a classroom experience was designed and implemented for a
group of final year Translation students at Jaume I University (Spain).
The group, which consisted of 22 students in total (16 females and 6
males), was presented with a translation project involving two tasks that
would take place simultaneously, both inside and outside the classroom.
The first of the two tasks required the students to translate the website
of a local LGBT+ organization, whilst the second involved working in
53
class with a number of selected texts in order to reflect and work on the
representation of non-binary identities and the translation challenges
these particular texts pose.
Translating a website would allow students to be exposed for the
first time in their education to a real translation commission embedded
in an authentic situation. The use of authentic materials—that is, the
fact that the project was not a decontextualized classroom activity—
was aimed at empowering the students to realize that their translation
answered a real need. This required them to take full responsibility and
extra commitment in their fulfilment of the project. The fact that a
non-profit organization was picked was also a key element in the pro-
ject, since it allowed us to discuss whether translation without charge
was justified at times, or whether this would pose a threat to profes-
sional translators, thus rendering this kind of commission unacceptable.
In the end, we concluded that translating for non-profit organizations
might be considered a form of volunteering, similar to pro bono work
in the case of lawyers, and so the project they had been presented with
was given the green light. Employability and other relevant questions
that related to the profession were also discussed throughout the semes-
ter: “What should our rate be in the case that we were not translating
for a non-profit organization? How much time do translators normally
have for a project like this?”.
Given the volume of words to be translated (almost 20,000 words),
the text required very close collaboration among all the students
involved. During the very first stages of the project, the students felt
the need to establish general guidelines and a common decision-mak-
ing framework that would allow them to translate their text, fostering
their interpersonal competences. They had to divide the text into differ-
ent sections, and decide who would translate each part. Since most of
the translation took place outside the classroom, the students decided
to create a document that would be shared online where they would
express their concerns, negotiate possible translation solutions and ask
their peers in the case that they found a particular difficulty and did not
know how to proceed. The commission also required revision, so when
the first draft of the translation was ready the text was redistributed for
peer-revision. Once the relevant changes were incorporated, the lecturer,
54
who scaffolded the whole process and supervised each of the different
stages, made one final revision and suggested some final changes.
Prior to the translation of the website, a workshop was held with a
representative of the LGBT+ organization whose website was to be
translated in class. The students were informed about the objectives and
activities of the organization, and the facilitator of the workshop intro-
duced the relevant conceptual content, adding a number of theoretical
components to the session, including HIV and the LGBT+ community
(since the organization offers psychological support to newly diagnosed
persons); sex, gender and sexuality, so that the students would be famil-
iar with those key concepts within their project, and so on. Introducing
an external voice in the classroom—in our case, our client—proved to
be very enriching for the students since, again, they were able to antic-
ipate the impact that their translation would have once finished, which
might be considered the essence of service learning. The representative
from the LGBT+ organization kept in touch with the students through-
out the project, and students were allowed to contact him to query any
doubts they might have. Since he did not have a linguistic background,
it was interesting to see how students, at times, would become frustrated
with his preference for translation solutions that disregarded typical
translation practice. This further developed the students’ critical skills,
since they had to develop their own professional criteria in order to
decide when the conventions of language might be neglected and why.
As aforementioned, the on-going translation project was comple-
mented by two in-class sessions where students were introduced to
non-binary representation and the challenges it poses in the context
of translation. The use of gender-neutral pronouns was introduced,
in conjunction with the use of the singular pronoun ‘they’, alongside
the rest of strategies explored above. Upon analysis of cisgenderism in
Spanish, a very interesting debate ensued, with regards to whether it
was realistic for gendered languages like Spanish to even aspire to avoid
cisgenderism. It was suggested that the accomplishment of all changes
required to avoid cisgenderism would make speech and communication
significantly harder, or even, to some extent, lead to linguistic incom-
prehension. The aim of these discussions was to consider whether con-
testing the grammar in which gender is given could be, or should be, an
55
option, and to make the students aware of the politics and ideology that
shape reality through established discursive practices.
Three texts in total were analyzed, focusing on the possible challenges
of translation; a translation was suggested for each, which was then dis-
cussed and negotiated among the students. During the first session,
students were presented with an extract from a webcomic (Eth’s Skin ),
which features a gender-neutral protagonist. The webcomic, written and
illustrated by Sfé R. Monster since 2014, tells the story of Eth, a non-
binary fisherperson who uses the pronouns they/them. Eth, whose troubles
begin when they encounter a long-lost mythical being, lives in a universe
that could be categorized as “casually queer,” where it is not uncommon to
find other characters who also fall outside the gender binary.
The second text we analyzed was an episode from Steven Universe,
an animated television series created by Rebecca Sugar. The series fol-
lows the adventures of Steven and The Crystal Gems as they try to
juggle fighting evil monsters and their daily lives in Beach City. While
the show features all kinds of queer relationships and non-binary rep-
resentations, we focused on a particular episode, Alone Together (series 1,
episode 37), where the main character, Steven, fuses with his best friend
Connie. Together, they form Stevonnie, who uses gender-neutral pro-
nouns. While Stevonnie is not a central character in the show (they do
not appear often), when they do appear, Stevonnie is presented as a pos-
itive embodiment of both male and female identity, and in fact both
boys and girls seem to be attracted to them indiscriminately.
Finally, we analyzed a character from the Canadian television com-
edy series The Switch. The show features Sü, an American programmer
who moves to Canada in order to transition from male to female. After
losing her job and her apartment, Sü moves in with Chris, a non-binary
character who uses ‘zie/zir’ pronouns.
4 Discussion and Conclusions
In order to conclude the classroom experience and gather the opinions
of the participating students in terms of the translation project, students
were asked to prepare and submit a classroom portfolio as a means to
56
reflect on non-binary representation, gender awareness, and the role

and responsibility of translators as text producers. In the portfolio they
included all the translation and revision work they had carried out dur-
ing the term: the section of the website they had translated, the second
draft following peer revision, the final version drafted upon receipt of
the lecturer’s suggestions, the revision of their classmates’ translation
and the analysis and translation of the different texts used in the class-
room. Moreover, the students were asked to reflect on their overall
experiences, and document their feedback both in the portfolio (indi-
vidually) and in later group interviews.
Regarding the first part of the project, students were asked whether
the personal, professional and academic outcome of translating the web-
site outweighed other more traditional approaches to translation edu-
cation. Students were invited to discuss whether they believed that this
type of authentic project enhanced their overall educational experiences
and were asked to provide reasons to justify their answers. They were
also asked to mention what exactly they had learnt, and their views on
the positive and negative aspects of the classroom experience.
In general, students were fond of the project. One element high-
lighted by the majority of students was the role of the external repre-
sentative. The general consensus was that having an external expert
“made the assignment a real translation project,” allowing them to see
how their translation would help the community, which was high-
lighted as one of the goals of service learning:
I really liked the fact that the expert came to class. It was so interesting.
And he was more than willing to answer all doubts we had when we were
translating. It was definitely more motivating. Whenever we were explain-
ing to him what we thought, or the translation strategy that we were
going to adopt, you could tell that he was actively listening to us because
he wanted the translation to be good as much as we did.
Having him help us (…) was particularly good. You see, the main differ-
ence between this project and other translations projects in class is that
we have helped a group of people here. Our translation is going to make a
local website more accessible, which, if you think about it, is much more
than any other translation assignment we have had so far has done.
57
The students really appreciated the fact “that the text was real,” even if at
first they thought that the size of the project was too immense, especially
compared with the regular translation tasks set for them at university.
When asked what they had learnt from the project, the most frequent
replies were related to interpersonal competences: justifying translation
decisions, negotiating meaning with the rest of students in the class, dis-
cussing other opinions and translation solutions and, especially, learning
how to work and collaborate with others. Following the replies related
to the translation itself, many students also reflected on how they had
learnt about the local LGBT+ community, what this type of organiza-
tion does, and the challenges (linguistic and otherwise) they face. For
instance, it was interesting to discover that some students were com-
pletely unaware of the significance of HIV for the LGBT+ community.
Furthermore, the students were particularly vocal regarding how
challenging collaboration had been during the project. Indeed, most
replies in the portfolio highlighted how difficult the students had found
working with the rest of their classmates, and stated that this type of
project requires more commitment and patience. Three of the students
wondered whether their translation work in groups at university would
be representative of professional tasks post-graduation, since a lot of
time was considered “wasted” on group work when “translators rarely
work like this.”
Regarding the second part of the project, students were asked for
their thoughts on cisgenderism and the representation of certain iden-
tities in discourse. Questions also arose regarding sexism and gender
bias, in terms of whether they could or should be eliminated from our
linguistic repertoire, and the possible consequences for the practice of
translation and for translators themselves.
None of the students had ever heard the word ‘cisgender’ before, so
in most cases everything was new for them. However, in general, stu-
dents were cautious when sharing their opinions. On the one hand,
they acknowledged that they had never thought of those “who have
never felt represented in mainstream media,” and understood their
need to “exist” in discursive practices. Nevertheless, students were still
somewhat sceptical when it came to implementing any of the possible
changes we had discussed in the classroom:
58
It’s not that we are not willing to, it’s just that language is so compli-
cated. How are we going to convince the country to change the way
they have always spoken? As a classroom activity this has been very inter-
esting, but I don’t think as translators there’s a lot we can do. Can you
imagine sending a translation to your client for him* to find out that you
have changed all gendered words in his* text? Not if we want to live off
translation.
The translation industry was consistently argued to be one of the main

reasons as to why avoiding cisgenderism in translation will remain a
utopia in the short term. In fact, students thought that asking “people
in real life what their pronouns are” may lead to potential confusion
and confrontation. The only exceptions they could think of were those
cases where the author of a particular work identifies themselves, or any
of their characters, as non-binary. In those cases, students agreed that
they would feel empowered to have a more active role in the process,
and that they would consider resorting to footnotes or prefaces in order
to explain and guide readers about their translation decisions and inter-
ventions in their text. One student made a very interesting remark as to
why this type of project is necessary, considering that there seems to be
no direct application in real-life translation contexts:
Maybe this wasn’t meant for us to start using gender-neutral pronouns

and replace masculine and feminine endings in nouns and adjectives for
other neutral options. I think this was just an excuse for us to question
why we do things the way we do. I don’t think I will use elle [Spanish
neutral pronoun] any time soon with people I don’t know, but at least
I know what it represents and I understand why this is important for
some people.
Indeed, sociological studies of professions warn us that society (and

the translation industry) does not treat newcomers in any profession
the way they treat professionals. Newcomers are put under much more
pressure to behave according to the norm, while professionals are given
more room to take risks. Students are unconsciously aware of this,
hence their reluctance to act against ‘the norm.’ Integrating critical
59
consciousness in the translation classroom is therefore an essential

endeavour in contemporary educational settings, and this implies being
able to assess the norm critically and intervene whenever necessary.
In the classroom, this involves teaching students the norm and, at the
same time, making them aware of their ability to actively transform said
norm, in order to attend the needs of a changing and diverse society.
Through the representation of non-binary identities, we have attempted
to frame the translation profession between two different narratives, and
simultaneously enable our students to reflect on the consequences and
implications of both. On the one hand, students have been exposed to
the traditional equivalence narrative that makes translators serve heter-
ocentric and ciscentric discourses. On the other hand, they have been
given the opportunity to reflect on the discursive technologies that con-
struct, reconstruct and deconstruct identities. Highlighting the mech-
anisms that shape, constrain and marginalize communities and social
practices has ultimately served to help students understand that equality
can only be achieved when the Self becomes aware of the position from
which they see the world, thus forming an understanding, in critical
terms, of how meaning is negotiated in society.
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1750399X.2016.1154339.
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Language. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
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53–66. Mainz: V&R Press.
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5
Teaching Gender Issues in Advertising
Translation: The Case of University
Marketing
Antonia Montés
1 Introduction
Feminist Translation Studies (FTS) is not only a new emerging disci-
pline within translation studies, but it is also a pedagogical skill to teach
in fields such as humanities and social sciences. FTS allows us “to scru-
tinize how various relations of power intersect with gender in different
situations and examine how resistant solidarities are forged against nor-
mative regimes” (Ergun and Castro 2017, p. 94). Therefore, it should
be integrated in the curriculum of translation degrees and put in prac-
tice in teaching when training different text genres in specialized trans-
lation. Santaemilia (2017, p. 7) claims that “la dimensión de género y
el objetivo de la igualdad sexual deberían, sin duda, encontrar cabida en
los programas de formación en traducción.” In general, feminist ped-
agogy is “concerned with gender justice and overcoming oppressions,”
recognizing “the genderedness of all social relations and consequently
A. Montés (*) 
Department of Translation and Interpretation,
University of Alicante, Alicante, Spain
64
A. Montés
of all societal institutions and structures” (Shrewsbury 1993, p. 9).

Shrewsbury (1993, p. 10) enumerates three concepts that are decisive
for feminist pedagogy: community, empowerment and leadership; these
feminist concepts should guide the teaching process of a subject. Thus,
feminist pedagogical issues within FTS, as I see it, means developing
teaching strategies to uncover the gender power relations that underlie
each translation act and presenting choices to make gender visible and
contribute to an equal gender construction in society.
As language and cultural conceptions play a crucial role in gender
representation, it is essential to teach them in the translation classroom,
in order to point out the social and institutional status gender equality
has, including gender policies as well as inclusive language usage, both
in the original and in the target culture. It is important to develop tools
to analyze how gender-discriminating language can be detected in texts
and how inclusive and egalitarian linguistic patterns can be effectively
expressed in the target culture. This means teaching strategies that ena-
ble students to perform a gender-inclusive translation, giving more visi-
bility to the representation of women in the translated texts.
Generally, students enrolled in an undergraduate translation degree
are quite aware of gender differences and sexism in society as a social
problem, since in the media and in social media it receives widespread
attention, but they do not apply this knowledge to translation and,
thus, the outcome is that they do not include considerations about
gender issues in their translation decisions. In addition, students have
certain ideas in mind regarding what translation entails, believing that
the translation process is made up by factors such as linguistic fidelity
towards the original text and the invisibility of the translator, neglect-
ing in their translation decisions considerations about gender identity.
Translation is wrongly thought to be an activity just limited to two
texts, ignoring that translation is a powerful ideological instrument to
create identities, politics and stereotypes. One of the first scholars to
state this fact was Venuti (1995) when he asserted that, “translation can
create stereotypes for foreign countries that reflect domestic cultural
and political values…” (Venuti 1995, p. 10). In the case of gender, it
can determine the conception genders have of each other and how they
5 Teaching Gender Issues in Advertising Translation …
65
perform and treat each other in different communicative situations.

Therefore, translation is highly influential in reaching gender equality in
society. That is the reason why teaching has to be concerned with intro-
ducing students to egalitarian thinking, taking non-sexist and inclusive
language use into account in their translation decisions.
This chapter explores the teaching of advertising translation within
the framework of FTS, taking into account feminist pedagogical tools.
The purpose is to show how gender-specific considerations should be
part of the decision-making process and how it can be put in practice
in the classroom. In this chapter, we concentrate on gender-inclusive
linguistic strategies from a contrastive point of view and within the
translation process. The aim is to build awareness about gender and sex-
ual equality in the students’ minds when translating. Students should
learn to opt for what I call feminist-active translation decisions rather
than adopting the male-as-norm principle that promotes female invis-
ibility when translating a text from one language into another, since
they are not really aware of the existing linguistic strategies in order
to elaborate an inclusive discourse in the target culture. Therefore, a
gender-sensitive approach in the teaching of advertising translation
is developed, consisting in analyzing gender issues that are implicit in
the original text and applying gender translation strategies based on an
effective use of gender-inclusive language in the target culture.
The translation module we present is structured around advertising
texts belonging to university marketing. The reason for this is that the
university is an institution that actively promotes gender equality by
having a special unit that deals with all kinds of gender issues in aca-
demic life and develops policies to promote gender equality amongst
the academic community (including teaching and research staff, admin-
istrative staff and students). Universities are eager to form a corporate
identity and to create a strong institutional brand personality. This is
due to the competition on the national and international education
market concerning student recruitment and expensive research projects.
A highly valuable brand means prestige, power and financial benefits
for a university. In order to promote an inclusive and non-sexist insti-
tutional discourse, many universities have also developed very useful
66
A. Montés
guidelines and have adapted their marketing communication to present

egalitarian language usage. Translation of the marketing material enables
the international projection of European universities. It is my belief that
this kind of teaching material is very enriching in translation training as
it has the advantage of students being very familiar with the academic
environment of the university in which they study and so are well
placed to evaluate the translational outcome. Furthermore, it also offers
a platform for discussion with regard to the social dimensions of gender
issues within an institution to which the students belong as they learn
about gender equality policies that have been put in practice regulating
the academic life in their university. Also the guide for a non-sexist and
inclusive language use, encouraging a gender-respectful institutional dis-
course, is an important tool for gender-sensitive translation training.
This chapter is organized as follows. The next part discusses adver-
tising translation dealing with gender aspects and the teaching of gen-
der issues applied to the translation of advertising material. In order to
understand the setting in which our study is based, it is also important
to outline the interplay between university marketing and translation.
The second part of the chapter presents the gender-sensitive teaching
approach, where the gender translation strategies are differentiated into
a contrastive and translational dimension, to reach the overall teaching
goal, which is the students’ competence to apply gender-inclusive lin-
guistic patterns when translating text genres within university marketing
communication.
2 Gender in Advertising Translation

The translation of advertising with special attention to the gender per-
spective is particularly enriching in translator training. Advertising, seen
as a sub-discipline of the marketing communication process of a brand,
implies a variety of challenges in the actual practice of translation. Not
only is an advertising campaign adapted to different markets with differ-
ent consuming patterns, but the translator has also to take into account
the complex nature of the advertising text with its discursive and semi-
otic constraints (Montes 2007).
67
2.1 Transcreation vs Advertising
Advertising translation is the general term that is applied to the trans-

lation of advertising and promotional material in the marketing
communication process. Valdés (2010, p. 1) indicates that “advertis-
ing translation is one of the areas within Translation Studies that has
evolved most rapidly and intensively in the last few decades, in spite
of its late entrance in the academia.” The term transcreation is nowa-
days applied to the whole adaptation and creativity process of mar-
keting material when transferred to a different cultural context than it
was designed originally. As Pedersen (2014) points out, this adaptation
practice is gaining more and more ground in the field of marketing
and advertising and can be defined by “performing all the adjustments
necessary to make a campaign work in all target markets, while at the
same time staying loyal to the original creative intent of the campaign”
(Pedersen 2014, p. 58). Risku et al. (2017, p. 58) discuss extensively the
definitional difference between terms such as, adaptation, localization
and transcreation, used for the translation of texts created in an adver-
tising context for products and services. According to these authors, in
functional translation theories, transcreation is just one among other
translation strategies employed in order to adapt the translated adver-
tising text with the purpose of achieving the same impact on the target
group and maintaining its persuasive function in the cultural context it
is translated for (Risku et al. 2017, p. 54). In this sense, transcreation
is a redesign of all parts of a text perfectly compatible with the target-
oriented focus of a functional translation approach. The term transcre-
ation, thus, “does not stem from a higher degree of adaptation, but
from the specific service processes offered under this translatorial label”
(Risku et al. 2017, p. 58). So, it can be assumed that transcreation is
a term in itself that has a marketing effect, since it sounds more allur-
ing to offer transcreation services rather than translation services. From
a scholarly point of view, the authors are very clear when affirming vig-
orously that ‘translation’ is “the generic term that includes transcreation
and other translation services, not just a minor step in a comprehensive
multicultural and multimedial production process” (Risku et al. 2017,
pp. 58–59).
68
A. Montés
Advertising (mis)uses gender representation a great deal for persua-

sive effects, reinforcing gender stereotypes that tend to become a norm
in contemporary societies.
As a social communication system that shares cultural values, assigns

meaning to material good, entertains, educates, and persuades us to pur-
chase products and services, advertising shapes and is shaped by gender
relations in society, including those that are sexist, racist and homopho-
bic. (Arend 2014, pp. 74–75)
If translation can be regarded as an activity that constructs cultures

(Bassnett and Lefevere 1998), then it also exports into the target culture
certain gender images and stereotypes. The interplay of gender advertis-
ing and translation studies has been researched by Nardi (2011), who
explores the translation of gender stereotypes in her analysis of auto-
mobile advertisements in Italian and British culture. In this sense, it
is important to stress that the product type plays a crucial role in the
research of advertising translation, as each product type requires differ-
ent marketing strategies and, thus, different kinds of translation deci-
sions (Montes 2007). At the same time, there are also big differences in
advertising cross-culturally a product, a service, or an institution. This
chapter focuses specifically on advertising material produced within the
university marketing communication, since these type of marketing
strategies convey a different advertising discourse and pursue other per-
suasive goals compared with product advertising. University marketing
proves to be especially enriching when analyzed within the framework
of advertising translation.
2.2 University Marketing and Translation
For a university it is not enough to be just an educational institu-

tion where knowledge is taught within the different degrees offered.
Prospective students do not choose one university among others because
of one particular component, but rather out of a variety of variables a
university should fulfil. Nowadays, a university has to transmit a certain
69
image and it is perceived differently according to gender.1 Universities

make a great effort to have a good positioning in the national and inter-
national education market, with the purpose of being recognized by
the stakeholders as a strong brand, because then the institution will be
attractive for different target groups,2 especially prospective and cur-
rent students, and this means for the university an increase in govern-
mental and private financial support, outstanding research, magnificent
facilities—in one word, prestige.
Branding as a means of differentiation and communicating compet-
itive advantages is an integral part in the marketing communication
strategies of each university. Communication plays an essential role in
creating and changing the perceived brand image. That is the reason
why advertising material is of great importance to convey brand image
to the various stakeholders. The purpose is to create a brand personal-
ity through a variety of marketing channels, whereas printed media is
as important as online communication. Marketing scholars (Chapleo
et al. 2011) believe that in the jungle of institutional brands, an educa-
tional institution would not have a chance of success just by marketing
its product, which is creating and spreading knowledge through teach-
ing and research. The success of a university brand is rather based on
positive brand associations that the various groups of stakeholders have
through marketing communication.
Universities use a variety of marketing channels to communicate with
the stakeholders in order to convey a lasting brand image: printed mate-
rial (leaflets, university prospectus), audiovisual material (promotional
spots placed in the website of the university; even each study field can
have its own spot), and online information on the multiple institutional
websites. The translation of that advertising material plays an impor-
tant role in university marketing, especially for non-Anglo-Saxon uni-
versities, as most of the advertising material, printed as well as online,
is translated at least into English, since English is the well-established
lingua franca of the globalized world (Montes 2007). Print material and
website content is not usually translated into a third language, proba-
bly because of the great volume of material that universities produce,
although it is recommended that “universities should translate their
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A. Montés
website contents into different languages to improve the comprehension

of the university’s brand” (Chapleo et al. 2011, p. 34).
2.3 Teaching Gender in Advertising Translation
Without a doubt, advertising translation within marketing commu-

nication is an attractive subject in the syllabus of a translation degree,
because of its highly interesting cultural and textual implications; nev-
ertheless, there is not much research to be found on its teaching. It is
only in recent years that more attention has been paid to the teaching
of gender in the translation classroom and especially to the impor-
tant topic of gender issues in the teaching of advertising translation.
Gender and its implications in the teaching of translation are mainly
discussed for audiovisual translation (De Marco 2016). Bartrina and
Espasa (2012) present their teaching experience within the framework
of feminist pedagogy and show how gender awareness was built up by
using print advertisements in an on-line translation course. By analyz-
ing the translation of advertisements, students could explore certain
gender roles and images conveyed. This gendered approach proved to
be a powerful methodology as “contemporary advertising reflects the
contradictions of women and men as social subjects. Such contradic-
tions permeate translation discourse and they require specific transla-
tion strategies” (Bartrina and Espasa 2012, p. 103). In the study carried
out by Corrius et al. (2016), the authors analyze the translations of
audiovisual non-profit advertising produced from Advertising and
Translation undergraduates, as well as Translation postgraduate stu-
dents. They proved empirically that the students’ level of gender aware-
ness when translating advertising texts is very low as they found out
that students do apply mainly non-inclusive language strategies, using
for example the generic masculine. These authors assert that “integrat-
ing gender in the curriculum of translation and advertising courses
more consistently and for longer will definitely result in ‘developing the
future professionals’ aptitude’ in the direction of gender equality princi-
ples” (Corrius et al. 2017, p. 115).
71
After sketching along this chapter the concept of advertising transla-

tion and the studies that have been carried out to its teaching addressing
gender issues, the next chapter outlines the gender-sensitive transla-
tion approach developed in order to promote egalitarian and non-
discriminating translation strategies that reinforce gender identities. The
proposal presented shows how students can learn to translate different
text genres within university marketing, taking gender issues into account
in order to perform a gender-inclusive translation, avoiding the generic
male form and making gender visible. In what follows, it is our aim to
describe a gender-inclusive approach where students acquire translation
strategies and techniques favouring gender equality. These are based, on
the one hand, on generalization or neutralization of generic male forms
and, on the other hand, on the visibility of gender representation.
3 Teaching Gender-Sensitive Translation

As we have argued, gender and sexual equality have become an addi-
tional value to other variables as tuition or research that universities use
in their marketing communication.3 An essential step towards gender
equality is the inclusive language use in all advertising material within
the university’s marketing performance, so that gender respectfulness
becomes part of the institution’s brand image. Translation of this mar-
keting material, on the other hand, should also follow gender inclu-
siveness, when targeting gender. The overall translation goal is that no
gender should be linguistically discriminated, as the texts are addressed
to the academic community in general.
3.1 The Translation Module Design
The translation module4 dealing with gender issues within university

marketing is part of a translation course, taught in the BSc Translation
Studies at the University of Alicante (Spain) during a semester in the
final year of the degree. This translation course aims the practice from
L1, Spanish, into L2, German, whereby translating into the foreign lan-
guage German5 entails an additional difficulty. Since in both languages,
72
A. Montés
Spanish and German, gender is expressed morphologically, students

clearly can observe gender-discriminating and sexist language use in
texts belonging to university marketing, as this particular field provides
a wide range of advertising text genres. Printed as well as audiovisual
material, but also hypertexts of the institutional website, proved very
suitable for our teaching purposes. Text genres included in the transla-
tion module were leaflets, a study guide for students, the institutional
slogan, the welcome message of the Vice-Chancellor and a promo-
tional video. At the end of the module, students should have acquired
an understanding of discursive mechanisms of gender representation
both in their mother tongue, Spanish, and in their foreign language,
German. They should also be able after this module to apply gender-
sensitive translation strategies in order to produce a gender inclusive tar-
get text.
3.2 Gender Respectful Linguistic Strategies
In the rewriting process into the target culture, students are urged to
apply inclusive translation strategies in order to produce a gender-
reinforcing target text. Especially interesting are the language guides
that have been formulated for an inclusive and non-sexist language
usage within the institution in order to create an egalitarian institutional
discourse to be applied at the administrative, pedagogical and scientific
levels. These language guides suggest linguistic strategies to break the
male-as-norm principle by neutralizing explicit gender markers and by
making both genders visible. The overall aim is to offer diverse linguistic
options in both languages to enable a more egalitarian institutional and
academic discourse avoiding linguistic gender discrimination. It is my
contention that a gender-inclusive institutional discourse as part of the
university’s corporate identity and brand personality is of vital impor-
tance, because language is most powerful in creating and transmitting
ideology, therefore, it does have the capacity to break linguistic sexism.
I argue that it might produce a domino effect; when students and staff
become aware of gender equality by using more inclusive and egalitar-
ian language expressions in their work and study, they are likely to use
73
it also in other spheres of their lives. Thus, a gender-sensitive language

usage will highly contribute to reaching gender equality within society.
These gender-inclusive guides are very complete in describing the
gender linguistic patterns. Most helpful for teaching purposes is the
fact that it shows non-inclusive and even sexist expressions in the insti-
tutional discourse in comparison with the gender-inclusive and egal-
itarian reformulation. When presenting both guides, for Spanish and
German, students (mainly female) find it most striking as they are not
at all aware of the actual existing language possibilities to neutralize the
male-as-norm principle and to make hidden female references visible.
It represents, thus, an ideal basis upon which translation students learn
to detect non-inclusive as well as to discover gender-sensitive linguistic
patterns in university marketing texts.
3.3 The Gender-Sensitive Translation Approach
The teaching is to be two-fold, paying attention to the contrastive

dimension and the translational dimension. Before explaining the two
dimensions in detail, a fictitious translation brief is given to the students
and the translation purpose is discussed:
Although Spain is a very popular Erasmus country amongst German
students to spend their year abroad, the University of Alicante has
noticed that proportionally to other nationalities not many students from
German-speaking countries come to the university to get enrolled in
undergraduate studies, and even fewer for postgraduate studies. In order
to improve international mobility from German-speaking countries the
University wants to translate into German part of its marketing perfor-
mance. Please pay special attention to the use of an inclusive language.
The contrastive dimension is fundamental in the gender-awareness
process as it shows the students the various inclusive language prac-
tices that each language offers. Students learn, on the one hand, what
the inclusive language practices in Spanish are and how they can be
detected in texts when doing the text analysis of the original text. This
is an important step towards the actual translation act. On the other
hand, students explore which linguistic strategies the German language
74
A. Montés
offers to reach visibility of both genders and to adopt gender-neutral

expressions when translating. For Spanish, the language guide from
Marimón and Santamaría (2014) can be used, and for German the lan-
guage guide written by the translation scholars Fischer and Wolf (2009)
is useful. The learning expectations that the students should fulfil at this
stage is the acquisition of the gender-inclusive linguistic practices in
both language pairs regarding visibility strategies, gender-neutral expres-
sions (neutral words and collective terms), gender symmetry and other
forms of gender rewriting (Table 1).
The first task is to go through several Spanish texts and find out if
the original texts use gender-inclusive language. It can be observed,
Table 1 Contrastive forms of gender linguistic practices

Gender-inclusive linguistic strategies
Linguistic strategies Spanish German
Visibility strategies
Pair form Alumnas y alumnos Studenten und
Profesoras y profesores Studentinnen
Dozentin und Dozent
Typographical variation alumnas/os Student/innen
StudentInnen,
Student_in, Student*in
Gender neutral expressions
Neutral words and collec- profesorado, personal Lehrende, Lehrkraft,
tive terms docente, cuerpo Lehrkörper,
docente Lehrpersonal
alumnado, estudiantes Studierende
Adjectives trabajo realizado por Mitarbeit von Studenten
estudiantes – -studentische Mitarbeit
trabajo estudiantil
Gender symmetry Sras. y Sres Damen und Herren
Other forms of rewriting that are language bound
Relative pronoun dirigido a aquellos –
dirigido a quienes
Avoiding in Spanish estar obligado – tener
the male ending in que
adjectives/participles
Avoiding of the personal man muss eine
pronoun ‘man’ Hausarbeit abgeben
– die Hausarbeit muss
abgegeben werden
75
for example, that in the online text of the Vice-Chancellor’s welcome

message6 there can be found non-inclusive terms like ‘profesores ’ [plu-
ral masculine] (instead of using the pair form ‘profesoras y profesores ’),
or expressions such as ‘todos los miembros de la comunidad universi-
taria ’ [plural masculine], which could be replaced by ‘quienes integran
la comunidad universitaria ’. Another example is ‘estudiantes extran-
jeros ’ [plural masculine], the use of this adjective, ending on a suffix
which indicates the male gender, could be avoided by using ‘alumnado
proveniente del extranjero ’.
When exploring the contrastive dimension, the linguistic strategies
are as important as the social status that gender in general and gender-
inclusive language in particular has in both cultures at university level.
In Spanish universities, gender equality started to be regulated in a legal
framework relatively late. In 2007, a state law (Ley Orgánica 3/2007)
ensured effective gender equality between women and men in all public
spheres (political, economical, social, cultural and labour). So, universi-
ties had to work out gender equality policies and plans of equality. The
University of Alicante first plan of equality, which lasted until 2012,
was presented in 2010. The guide for inclusive language,7 intended to
be developed within this first plan, was actually finished in 2014. The
university is now undergoing the third plan of equality that will last
until 2020. In Germany, though universities have not been obliged
by a state law to ensure gender equality, they have been working on
it since the 1990s. For example, the executive organ of the University
of Munich, enacted a recommendation for gender equality between
women and men in all spheres of academic life8 in 1995. The guide for
inclusive language has been downloadable from the university’s website
since 2011.9
From these two case studies, the University of Alicante and the
University of Munich, we can learn that gender equality is an important
issue in the university system of both countries, where it is regarded as
a contributing factor to create a competitive brand image and person-
ality. For the contrastive work, the technique of searching for parallel
texts proves most enriching in this context. The next task students have
to fulfil consists of surfing through several German universities’ web-
sites looking for similar texts to translate for this translation module.
76
A. Montés
This task shows to what extent German universities use gender-inclusive

language and how they deal with gender in their institutional dis-
course. Students can check which gender-inclusive linguistic strategies
that have been studied before in the German-inclusive language guide
are applied, and how frequently they are used. The parallel text search
among the websites of the University of Munich proves that this univer-
sity consequently talks about students as ‘Studierende,’ about lecturers as
‘Dozentinnen und Dozenten,’ about researchers as ‘Wissenschaftlerinnen
und Wissenschaftler,’ ‘Professorinnen und Professoren,’ preferring the pair
form as a linguistic gender visibility strategy. In the link for visiting pro-
fessors from abroad, we just find the male form ‘Gastwissenschaftler,’ or
‘Preisträger der Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung.’ There is no female
form; the male-as-norm principle has been applied.
These examples show that in both cultures the advertising material is
not completely gender inclusive, although, as we have stated throughout
the chapter, gender is an additional marketing value for the university.
Students, at this stage, should be able to detect gender non-inclusive
linguistic strategies in the original language and be aware of all linguistic
options offered by the target language. The methodology applied in the
contrastive dimension is similar to critical discourse analysis as gender
stereotypes and sexist expressions in the texts are revealed.
The second dimension in our approach is the translational dimen-
sion. This dimension consists of detecting the textual references to
gender in the original language and translating the text into the target
language taking into account the gender linguistic mechanism for an
inclusive language performance and, thus, reaching a gender-sensitive
translation (Fig. 1). This is going to be illustrated by a short text found
in a leaflet where the University of Alicante presents itself:
Cada año más de 30.000 estudiantes se matriculan en nuestra universi-

dad y alrededor de 4.000 estudiantes internacionales se integran con los
alumnos nacionales en un ambiente académico multicultural. Unos 2000
profesores se encargan de las tareas docentes e investigadoras, muchas de
las materias impartidas se encuentran en diversos idiomas, como el inglés.
The analysis of the original text shows that there are gender references
to students and lecturers that are not inclusive, for example ‘alumnos
77
Fig. 1 University of Alicante leaflet in Spanish

78
A. Montés
nacionales,’ ‘2000 profesores. ’ The term ‘estudiantes,’ instead, is regarded

as gender neutral. In order to prepare the actual translation process,
students fulfil the task of reformulating the original text using gender-
inclusive expressions. ‘Alumnos nacionales ’ could be replaced by a pair
form ‘alumnas y alumnos nacionales ’ or a gender-neutral collective
term ‘alumnado nacional. ’ In the second case, only one option can be
applied, because the numeral can only be combined with the pair form.
So, ‘profesores ’ could be replaced by ‘profesoras y profesores. ’ The refor-
mulation task in the original language makes it easier for students to
perform a gender-inclusive translation into the foreign language. In
the case of ‘estudiantes,’ in German there are quite a few options that
can be applied. Firstly, the pair form ‘Studentinnen und Studenten ’ or
three kinds of typographical variations of the pair form ‘Student/innen,
StudentInnen, Student_innen, and Student*innen. ’ There is also the pos-
sibility of the gender-neutral term ‘Studierende. ’ Since, in the original
text, the term ‘estudiantes ’ has been used twice, the best option might
be the use of the neutral term for the first use and the use of one of the
pair forms for the second use. The technique of parallel texts confirms
the most frequent use on German universities’ websites. When stating
the overall number of students, most universities use the gender-neutral
‘Studierende,’ which is why this should be the first choice. The second
‘estudiantes ’ follows shortly after the first one. In this case, it is recom-
mendable to translate it differently by using one of the pair forms. The
parallel text search proves that the most frequent is the one with the
capital letter ‘I,’ as in ‘StudentInnen. ’ A more innovative form of gender-
inclusive language is ‘Student*innen,’ as * stands for the gender gap. As
Fischer and Wolf (2009) explain, the gender gap is used to make exist-
ing genders, that have been invisible until now, visible. In the parallel
texts, we found just once the example ‘Wissenschaflter*innen. ’ But this
form of gender visibility is a step forward to not perceiving gender in
a binary conception. The last gender reference ‘profesores’ can be trans-
lated by the neutral word ‘Lehrende’ or the pair form ‘Dozentinnen und
Dozenten.’ The gender convention in German is that when a pair form
is used, then the male form goes behind the female one. In Spanish, it is
frequent to find the female behind the male form.
During the discussion of this case study, the approach in order to
reach a gender-sensitive translation based on gender-inclusive language
79
strategies was developed and applied in practice to a short text from a

leaflet translated in the classroom. These strategies have been taught
from a contrastive perspective, by studying inclusive language use in the
original language and the target language and analyzing university web-
site content to uncover the most frequent uses of the gender-inclusive
forms in the target culture. Although the advertising material—print or
online—of universities is not always adapted to a gender-inclusive lan-
guage use, as translators we have the option—even the responsibility—
not to follow expressions that make women invisible by using the
male-as-norm principle but to apply a gender-sensitive approach when
translating. But it is also our duty to go a step further and apply in our
translation practice a usage of gender-inclusive language that does not
differentiate gender anymore in female and male, but takes into account
other gender identities. The overall teaching goal to be reached in trans-
lator training, as I see it, is to impart the idea that gender does not fol-
low rigid norms, but instead it is a dynamic and changeable concept.
4 Final Remarks
The ultimate goal of university marketing communication is creating a
strong brand image and brand personality of the institution. There is no
doubt that gender equality has become an additional marketing value
that universities stress in their printed and online marketing performance.
Gender-inclusive language plays an important role in the institutional
discourse of universities, although there are examples that the generic
male is occasionally used on the diverse marketing channels such as print
material (leaflets and brochures) and institutional websites. Translation
can, in such cases, apply deliberately gender-sensitive linguistic strategies
to make both genders visible or to neutralize any gender implications.
Therefore, in this chapter, we have designed a gender-sensitive approach
to teach translation from a gender-inclusive perspective. Within this
study, a teaching methodology has been developed that applied gender
linguistic strategies for making women visible and neutralizing the dom-
inant male gender representation. The effectiveness of this approach was
put in practice by a two-fold teaching method divided into contrastive
dimension and translational dimension. In the contrastive dimension, the
80
A. Montés
gender-inclusive linguistic strategies for both language pairs were studied.

Also, the search for parallel texts shows to what extent German univer-
sities integrate a gender-inclusive language use in their marketing com-
munication. In this dimension, the ideological component behind why
universities produce advertising texts and why translation is so important
for a strong brand image and for its international projection, plays an
important role. The translational dimension shows that there are a vari-
ety of choices for the target text in order to produce a gender-sensitive
translation. The translation choice should be based on how frequently a
term can be found in parallel texts of the same text genre and the same
media channel, as these show the actual linguistic usage in the texts.
Nevertheless, sometimes the translator should dare to opt for choices that
are less frequent, because they may reflect the complexity of gender more
appropriately. The gender gap in German is a good example, because it
accentuates the existence of diverse gender identities and, thus, conveys
a more respectful and tolerant way of perceiving gender. Translation
choices that break the norm show future translators that translation is a
powerful activity towards a better understanding of gender and a more
open-minded thinking towards sexual and social equality.
Notes
1. Bowden and Wood (2011, p. 139) have classified the different choices
in the selection of a higher education institution. It appears that women
take into account attributes such as location, physical factors, safety
and security, academic excellence, diversity and student–teacher ratios.
Instead, men favour, factors such as quality of faculty, availability of
extracurricular activities and quality for social life.
2. The main target group that university branding addresses are students,
lecturers and researchers, administrative staff and institutional govern-
ance bodies.
3. The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Alicante, for example, wel-
comes the academic community by emphasizing that the university is in
terms of gender equality a leading institution, available at https://web.
ua.es/en/oficina-rector/welcome-message.html, accessed 13 November
2018.
81
4. Taught during 4 weeks, 4 hours a week.

5. The students’ average language level in German is more or less B2.
6. https://web.ua.es/es/oficina-rector/saludo.html, accessed 13 November
2018.
7. file:///C:/Users/info.DESKTOP-0JUPED9/Downloads/guia-discur-
so-igualitario-ua.pdf, accessed 13 November 2018.
8. http://www.frauenbeauftragte.uni-muenchen.de/frauenbeauftr/gesetzl_
best/weitere/empfehlungen.pdf, accessed 13 November 2018.
9. https://www.frauenbeauftragte.uni-muenchen.de/genderkompetenz/
sprache/sprache_pdf.pdf, accessed 13 November 2018.
References
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Adrienne Trier-Bieniek and Patricia Leavy, 53–79. Rotterdam, Boston and
Taipei: Sense Publishers.
Bartrina, Francesca, and Eva Espasa. 2012. Evaluating Creativity from a
Perspective of Feminist Pedagogies: Translating Print Advertisements in
the Virtual Classroom. In Challenges in Language and Translation Teaching
in the Web 2.0 Era, ed. M. Cánovas, G. Delgar, L. Keim, S. Kahan, and
À. Pinyana, 93–104. Granada: Comares.
Bassnett, Susan, and André Lefevere. 1998. Constructing Cultures: Essays on
Literary Translation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Bowden, Jana, and Leigh Wood. 2011. Sex Doesn’t Matter: The Role of
Gender in the Formation of Student-University Relationships. Journal of
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Castro, Olga, and Emek Ergun. 2017. Feminist Translation Studies: Local and
Transnational Perspective. London: Routledge.
Chapleo, Chris, María Victoria Carrillo Durán, and Ana Catillo Díaz. 2011.
Do UK Universities Communicate Their Brands Effectively Through Their
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Corrius, Montse, Eva Espasa, and Marcella De Marco. 2016. Situated
Learning and Situated Knowledge: Gender, Translating Audiovisual Adverts
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———. 2017. Balancing Gender Awareness and Professional Priorities in
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la igualidad Sexual [Translating for Sexual Equality], ed. José Santaemilia,

109–121. Comares: Granada.
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Translation. Target 28 (2): 314–325.
Ergun, Emek, and Olga Castro. 2017. Rethinking Difference and Commonality
Across Borders. In Feminist Translation Studies: Local and Transnational
Perspective, ed. O. Castro and E. Emek, 93–108. London: Routledge.
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chten Sprachgebrauch. Available at https://transvienna.univie.ac.at/filead-
min/user_upload/z_translationswiss/Studium/Wissenschaftliches_Arbeiten/
Geschlechtergerechtes_Formulieren_FischerWolf.pdf. Accessed 13 November
2018.
Marimón, Carmen, and Isabel Santamaría. 2014. Guía para un discurso igual-
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handle/10045/18083. Accessed 13 November 2018.
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Matters.
6
Queer(y)ing (Im)Possibilities in the British
Academic Translation Classroom
Michela Baldo
1 Introduction
Over the last two decades, translation practices within the field of
translation studies have been theorized as instrumental in the produc-
tion of cultural change (Tymoczko 2007, 2010; Baker 2013). This
understanding of translation as a political tool for transformation fol-
lows in the footsteps of feminist translation as first theorized in the
1990s in Canada and includes more recent feminist perspectives within
translation studies (Castro and Ergun 2016; von Flotow and Farahzad
2016). Some of these perspectives can be inserted into the field of queer
understandings of gender and sexuality in translation (Larkosh 2011),
in which queer refers to a consideration of these categories as con-
structed and non-essentialistic.1
M. Baldo (*) 
Honorary Fellow in Translation Studies, University of Hull, Hull, UK
84
M. Baldo
This chapter uses an auto-ethnographic methodological approach,

which reflects on my positionality as a queer feminist scholar and on
my teaching experience in various British universities (University
of Birmingham, University of Leicester and University of Hull), by
addressing the limitations encountered in neoliberal institutions2 (Fraser
and Taylor 2016; Morrish and Sauntson 2019, forthcoming) that do
not always foster the concepts promoted in queer and feminist thought.
In doing so, the chapter will first provide a description of my transla-
tion classes, and subsequently it will offer some pedagogical suggestions
on how to implement within them ideas stemming from feminist/queer
pedagogy and translator’s training studies, drawing specifically on key
concepts from queer theory, such as that of queer desire.
2 Feminist Activism and Translation

Within Translation Studies Undergraduate
and Postgraduate Curriculum
in the British Neoliberal University
The discipline of Translation Studies has recently witnessed a surge of
interest in politicized approaches to translation, starting from the work
of Venuti (1995, 1998) in the 1990s until the more recent work of
Tymoczko (2007, 2010), Baker (2013, 2016), and Wolf (2012). These
more contemporary studies, which have been framed under the term
‘sociological turn’ or ‘activist turn’ (Wolf 2012) in Translation Studies,
have highlighted the fact that translators are not neutral professionals who
merely reproduce texts and mediate cultural encounters, but are active
participants in producing cultural realities (Baker 2013). These studies
have emphasized the concept of political positioning by translators and
interpreters, in a similar way to the feminist studies that came much ear-
lier. Feminist studies of translation started in the 1990s in Canada (von
Flotow 1997; Simon 1996) and gave emphasis to a gendered perspective
to the study of translation, by tackling not only sexist language but also
the fact that the language describing translation was infused with sexist
6 Queer(y)ing (Im)Possibilities …
85
metaphors, such as the idea of translation as a ‘female’ work that is sub-

ordinate to a ‘male’ original text (Chamberlain 1988). Since the 1990s,
feminist translation studies have increasingly developed by exploring a
variety of feminist perspectives, including queer feminist perspectives,
and by expanding their initially limited geographical sphere by including
more transnational perspectives. Indeed, the topic of my current research
includes such queer perspectives as it concerns feminist translation within
queer transfeminist activism in Italy—that is, feminism informed by
transgender politics.
Given my research interests, I have sought to place specific emphasis
in my pedagogy on the ‘queer’ aspect of feminist translation studies and
on the idea of activism, by following in the footsteps of Baker (2013)
and Tymoczko’s (2007, 2010) theorizations of translation as an inter-
ventionist and transformative practice. In the context of my teaching
within MA and BA programmes in Translation Studies at three British
Universities in the UK based in Birmingham, Leicester and Hull, fem-
inist translation features as a topic usually taught within a module on
Translation Theories,3 which is compulsory for all MA and BA students,
and runs for one or two semesters.4 This module covers all the major
theoretical understandings of translation, ranging from the notion of
equivalence in the 1960s and 1970s, and culminating in contemporary
theorizations of translation that deal with its sociopolitical importance.
The course also usually includes an overview of studies on audiovisual
translation, studies on the use of new technologies in translation, and
sometimes studies on translator’s training and pedagogy. In my classes
dedicated to feminist translation, I typically include a brief overview on
the more recent queer understanding of feminism in translation, follow-
ing Butler’s (1990) theorization of the term queer, and her emphasis on
the idea of the performativity of gender categories and on the notion of
non-normative sexualities.
Given the format of the module on translation theories, which
requires all the major theories of translation to be covered in ten two-
hour classes, in the case of Hull (excluding the introductory and revi-
sion classes), or more in the case of Leicester and Birmingham, only
one single two-hour class could usually be devoted to the discussion
86
M. Baldo
of feminist translation.5 Another compulsory module where feminist

translation is discussed is the ‘Research methods’ or ‘Research Skills’
MA module, which runs for the entire semester or part of it (depend-
ing on the University), and whose objective is to prepare students for
acquiring the skills for writing their MA dissertation and choosing
their MA dissertation topic. At the University of Hull, another com-
pulsory MA module, which is taught in Semester 1, ‘Linguistics for
Translators,’ could accommodate some space to talk about language,
gender and sexuality. Outside of these compulsory classes, based on
my experience of working at three British universities, feminist trans-
lation or a gendered perspective on the study of translation was not
part of the curriculum. The possibility for discussing feminist transla
tion within the modules that I have taught is thus very scarce. I
believe that feminist, gendered and queer approaches to translation,
rather than just being a theme of study among many others, should
become instead one of many critical lenses through which we could
devise entire modules—especially given the fact that these perspec-
tives deal with contemporary understandings of translation as an ide-
ologically and emotionally charged activity. Therefore, in addition to
extending the discussion of these feminist perspectives to more classes
and modules, it would be important, I argue, to adopt a general crit-
ical pedagogical practice, which is infused with the ideas covered in
classes on feminist translation. More specifically, with this chapter I
integrate approaches from studies of university-based translation train-
ing with scholarship on feminist and queer pedagogies, which foster
ideas similar to those proposed by the sociological and activist turn in
translation studies, mentioned previously. The pedagogical approaches
proposed will be discussed in light of examples from my own teaching
activities.
Before presenting them I will sketch out the main concepts of femi-
nist and queer pedagogy that bear similarities with concepts stemming
from a translation pedagogy informed by sociopolitical approaches to
translation within the discipline of Translation Studies.
87
3 Exploring the Convergences

Between Queer Feminist Pedagogies
and Translation Pedagogies
Feminist pedagogy, as expressed by Accardi (2013), is not only
interested in counteracting patriarchy in society but also in coun-
tering its presence in the way subjects are taught. It is thus a ped-
agogical framework grounded in feminist theory that includes
epistemological assumptions, student–teacher relationships, teaching
strategies and approaches. According to Shrewsbury (1997), feminist
pedagogy involves a vision of the class as a liberatory environment in
which students and teachers act as subjects, and in which teaching and
learning are practices engaged with the self, with the material being
studied and with the wider community. The core principles of femi-
nist pedagogy thus include a focus on destabilizing the power relation-
ship between teachers and students, in a way that emphasizes students
as knowledgeable and teachers as learners (Accardi 2013). Moreover,
feminist pedagogy theorizes the notion of power, not just as dom-
ination, but as “energy, capacity and potential” (Shrewsbury 1997,
p. 168). Feminist pedagogy also places a strong emphasis on experien-
tial knowledge and reflexivity, and on the idea of using experience as a
resource—including using students’ and teachers’ own everyday experi-
ences of sexism and oppression as learning materials, in the footsteps of
bell hooks’ (1994) theorization of the importance of reclaiming wom-
en’s voices that have historically been silenced by a patriarchal culture.
Importantly, feminist pedagogy also approaches teaching as activism
(Louise-Lawrence 2014), because, according to Accardi (2013), when
students’ agency is respected, students are capable of bringing about
social change. In this way, feminist pedagogy emphasizes transformative
learning and teaching practices. Indeed, feminist pedagogy is inspired
by critical pedagogy and the work of Paulo Freire (2005), according to
whom knowledge is not neutral, rather it is limited and “it is always a
result of choices from among a large number of possibilities” (Naskali
and Keskitalo-Foley 2019, p. 103). This view of pedagogy encourages
88
M. Baldo
all classroom participants (students and teachers) not just to acquire

new knowledge, but to transform their way of thinking about power
in new directions. Moreover, feminist pedagogy encourages students to
take their learning beyond the walls of the classroom and transform the-
ory into action (Shrewsbury 1997).
Queer pedagogy shares a lot of commonalities with feminist peda-
gogy because both queer theory and feminist theory are interested in
articulating the links and complexities between the categories of gender
and sexuality, and they are both borne out of a “deep understanding
that oppression of women and suppression of lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender existence are deeply intertwined” (Marinucci 2010, p. 106).
Queer pedagogy is especially interested in critically examining processes
of “normalization and reproductions of power relationships, and com-
plicate understandings of presumed binary categories (for example,
man/woman, teacher/student)” (Shlasko 2005, p. 125). Queer Theory,
as affirmed by Britzman (quoted in Shlasko 2005), insists on posing the
production of normalization as a problem. Because of this, the scholar
of queer pedagogy Kumashiro (2002), proposes that education should
involve learning something that disrupts our common perspectives
of the world. Queer pedagogy, thus, shares with feminist pedagogy a
focus on challenging oppression and binary categories. However, queer
pedagogy places more emphasis on challenging ideas of normalcy and
understanding the learning process as a moment of ‘trouble,’ if we are
to borrow a term popularized by Butler (1990). Therefore, despite the
fact that according to Fraser and Lamble (2015, p. 61) most of the
existing scholarship on queer pedagogy has focused on “engaging queer
students, being a queer teacher, or teaching queer content in the cur-
riculum,” queer pedagogy should be looked at as a teaching method or
approach that, like feminist pedagogy, can be extended to all subjects of
teaching.
These reflections on feminist and queer pedagogy can also be dis-
cussed in light of theorizations of translation training studies, such as
those of Kiraly (2000) and Baker and Maier (2011). Like feminist ped-
agogies, emphasis on creating collaborative and empowering learning
environments, the social constructivist approach to translation train-
ing discussed by Kiraly (2000) suggests that knowledge is constructed
89
collaboratively in the classroom, through intersubjective interactions that

emphasize students’ responsibility and control over the learning process;
for example, by delivering content and influencing the design of transla-
tion classes. According to Kiraly’s (2000) socio-constructivist approach to
translation training, learning is a social process created through dynamic
interactions between teachers and learners. Therefore, translation peda-
gogy should be based on collaborative tasks and interpersonal discussions
and debates in which the lecturer becomes a facilitator, thereby playing a
similar role to the one suggested by feminist and queer pedagogy.
The translation classroom, for Kiraly (2000), should also be con-
nected to the real world through teaching material based on authentic
translation tasks, and teachers should be practicing translators them-
selves. These are also ideas that stem from feminist and queer pedagogy,
with an emphasis placed on activism and on practices based on per-
sonal experience. Similar to Kiraly, Koskinen (2012) posits the concept
of “public translation” by drawing on the critical pedagogy mentioned
above. Koskinen sees the translator educator as a facilitator of independ-
ent thinking, who emphasizes the link between academia and the real
world by asking translation students to engage in “research agendas that
reach out to extra-academic audiences” (Koskinen 2012, p. 3).
Baker and Maier (2011), whose theorizations of translator’s training
can be included within the socio-political approaches to translation, dis-
cuss the issue of ethics in translation training by emphasizing the fact
that students should take responsibility for their translation decisions
and, thus, teachers should refrain from using didactic instructing. This
pedagogical style, therefore, stresses critical self-reflexivity and exper-
imentation—both of which are elements found in feminist and queer
pedagogy. Baker and Maier (2011) also propose strategies and activi-
ties that aim to foster the critical self-reflexivity they encourage in the
translation classroom. As is evident from the literature, there are many
similarities between feminist and queer pedagogies and those translation
pedagogies, which are based on social constructivist and socio-political
approaches to translation training.
In the following part of this chapter, I will provide examples of my
translation strategies and activities, by referring to the previously dis-
cussed pedagogical approaches.
90
M. Baldo
4 Teaching Translation Informed by Queer

and Feminist Pedagogy Within MA Courses
in Translation Studies
In this section, I will elaborate on some of my own teaching prac-
tices, using examples from the MA courses in Translation Studies that
I taught,6 drawing from feminist and queer pedagogy and transla-
tor’s training studies, in light of an idea of translation as an activist
intervention.
As highlighted in Section 2 of this chapter, due to the scarcity of
space dedicated to the discussion of feminist translation in the curric-
ulum of the MA in Translation Studies, I have been trying to extend
the content of feminist translation classes to other classes not specifically
devoted to queer and feminist approaches to translation, and to apply
the principles of feminist and queer pedagogy, and translator’s training
from a socio-political perspective, to my own pedagogical practice.
In terms of content, I have, for example, emphasized the issue of the
empowerment of the translator from the very first classes of the module
‘Translation Theory,’ in order to anticipate the content that would later
be covered in the curriculum when it came to the discussion of feminist
translation and politicized approaches to translation.
At the University of Hull, before introducing feminist translation
theories, I was able to insert examples that highlighted the impor-
tance of a gendered approach to language within the class on pragmat-
ics in the MA module ‘Linguistics for Translators,’ during discussion
of the concept of politeness or the association of specific dialects
with specific gendered and sexual cultural phenomena. Moreover, in
the MA module entitled ‘Specialist Translation Skills. Legal, Medical
and Technical Translation,’ which I taught at the University of Hull,
I selected medical texts, such as medical questionnaires and patient
leaflets, for in-class translation exercises that could lend themselves
to a critique of dominant heteronormative medical discourses, which
often assume sameness between women and men when there are dif-
ferences or assume differences when there are none, or ignore trans-
gender issues and non-heteronormative sexualities. In this class, I also
91
tried to implement Kiraly’s (2000) suggestion of offering students the

opportunity of working with authentic translation tasks, by draw-
ing on my personal contacts with some translation agencies (see also
Kiraly 2015).
Another module that allowed me to work on deconstructing notions
of gender and sexuality in translation was the ‘Audiovisual Translation’
MA module that I taught at the University of Leicester, given that
a large body of scholarly work has been produced in Audiovisual
Translation Studies on translating concepts related to taboo subjects,
among which non-heteronormative sexualities and non-binary notions
of gender are the most prominent.
After introducing feminist translation theories, in the research meth-
odology classes (but also in others), I encouraged students to source their
research material from contemporary politics, popular culture, film and
media, following Halberstam’s (2012) queer pedagogic suggestions, and
to consider undertaking their MA dissertations (research-based or trans-
lation-based) in topics that could be possibly embedded in their life
experiences, and that involved an emphasis on activism, thereby follow-
ing feminist pedagogy’s suggestions (Louise-Lawrence 2014).
In this way, I followed Koskinen’s (2012) “public translation” theory,
by encouraging students to do fieldwork and participant research. In so
doing, I also ensured students experienced a link between the classroom
and the wider social context in which they live and work—an idea also
put forward by Kiraly (2000). By the term experience, I mean ‘gen-
dered experience’; an experience analyzed through the lenses of various
forms of privilege and oppression based on gender and sexuality (but
also based on categories such as race, class, ability etc.). One interesting
example of an activist, queer and feminist MA dissertation project was
written by a female student in Hull in the academic year of 2016–2017.
The student created a narrative text that collected heterosexist and
misogynist quotes articulated by Donald Trump and hijacked them, fol-
lowing von Flotow’s (1991) feminist translation theorization, by putting
them alongside banners from Women’s Marches against Trump around
the world and other feminist quotes. The student then translated the
text into Cypriot Greek with the aim that such translation could be
used for activist purposes. This activist project was certainly a way for
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M. Baldo
the student to validate, reclaim, and transform her own experiences of

misogyny, male violence and heterosexism by creating something that
had the potential to give rise to other texts and events.
In addition, I tried to incorporate into my pedagogical practice
and philosophy the idea of challenging students’ assumptions about
the learning environment, discarding the idea that students are ves-
sels waiting to be filled by knowledge (hooks 1994), and emphasizing
instead their responsibility as active participants in the learning process.
For instance, I dedicated a lot of time and space to classroom debates,
which involved dividing students into small groups (which changed
frequently with regards to which students were in which groups, where
they were sitting etc.), with the aim of enriching student’s discussions.
In these small groups, students explored strategies for using the concep-
tual tools of translation studies that they were learning about, based on
their own agenda and experiences (Baker and Maier 2011). This space
for reflection was intended to give students the opportunity to consider
the advantages and disadvantages of their translation choices, in order
to prepare them for becoming translators who are responsible, not only
towards their clients and authors, but also towards their community
(Baker and Maier 2011). It was also an occasion for co-constructing
with students knowledge about translation.
These classroom group debates were particularly useful for encour-
aging students to apply abstract concepts when performing practi-
cal translation tasks. These debates were especially fruitful in classes as
part of the ‘Research Skills’ or ‘Research Methods’ MA modules, where
group discussion was necessary in order for the students to formu-
late possible topics of research in partnership with other students who
shared the same research interests. As an example, students were encour-
aged to propose research topics for their MA dissertations (which were
chosen within the field of literary, drama, audiovisual or activist trans-
lation), and to formulate potential research questions related to them,
trying to imagine what methodologies could be used to answer those
questions and to assess the feasibilities of such projects.
Class discussions were also a major element of the MA module
‘Specialist Translation Skills,’ which I taught at the University of Hull,
where students also worked in groups according to language pairs and
93
were asked to translate together and discuss their translation choices. The
language pairs included English paired up with major European languages
(such as French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek) and non-Euro-
pean languages (such as Arabic), and the texts that students were asked
to translate concerned the medical, technical and legal field. As expressed
by Kiraly (2000), these assignments can teach students how to work as
members of a professional team. Moreover, as part of these assignments,
students were asked to think about how making their positionality visible,
outside of the constraints of the translation brief (which, in real life pro-
jects is often not present or is very general). Presentations run by students
and involving their potential dissertation topics were also a good way to
boost interest, by encouraging students to engage with each other’s ideas.
However, despite the optimistic description of these activities and
pedagogical efforts, the problems I faced in what is nowadays defined as
the British Neoliberal University, were numerous. Rather than the prac-
tical difficulties of finding agencies that were ready to partner with the
university in order to deliver authentic translation projects to students,
or the difficulty of rearranging tables and chairs into a circle, in order to
lessen the hierarchical divide between teachers and students, other prob-
lems occurred that challenged my pedagogical approaches. In the next
section of this chapter, I will discuss these challenges and my attempts
at addressing them, by drawing on the concepts of trouble and desire,
which stem from queer pedagogy.
5 Reflections on the Neoliberal University:

Queer Trouble and Queer Desires
As expressed by hooks (2010) and Koskinen (2012), one major prob-
lem with applying feminist and queer pedagogy within educational
settings like universities, is that the hierarchy between students and
teachers cannot be ignored since universities pay teachers to assess stu-
dents’ progress and students have to demonstrate their progression in
various ways. However, by recognizing that the hierarchy remains, the
lecturer can still minimize its effects. According to Koskinen (2012),
who draws on Tymoczko (2007), one potential strategy for minimizing
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M. Baldo
such a hierarchy is for the lecturer to embrace the students’ (and the
teacher’s own) weaknesses, as well as their strengths. Since positionality
is important according to feminist and queer pedagogy and to socio-
political approaches to translator’s training, lecturers should reveal their
positionalities and share their views on a variety of issues with the stu-
dents. Although Baker and Maier (2011) recognize that knowing where
the teacher stands is likely to influence the opinion of the students, they
also stress the fact that the teacher merely stating their own position-
ing does not imply an imposition of a specific view on the students.
Moreover, sharing this information with the student by the lecturer
complies with feminist pedagogy’s ideas of fostering a more mutual rela-
tionship between teachers and students of translation. However, this
practice of sharing has not always been favoured by all the universities
in which I have worked. At the University of Leicester, for my job inter-
view, I was asked to present a sample MA class that could be included in
their ‘Translation Theory’ module, called ‘Development of Translation
Studies.’ After my presentation, in which I outlined the content of a
class that integrated feminist and queer approaches to translation, I
was asked by the interview panel if I had considered how this content
could be delivered to a cohort of international students from Asia and
the Middle East, for whom these topics could be understood as “sen-
sitive” or “upsetting,” given that the majority of their students came
from these two areas of the world.7 Further doubts and critiques were
also raised by translation studies colleagues, working in the Chinese and
Arabic language sections, when I expressed the idea of teaching a couple
of extra classes on the module ‘Current Issues in Translation,’ including
perspectives on queer feminist activism and translation. These colleagues
suggested that such topics were not appropriate for our teaching con-
text. Considering that my queer and feminist research interests are also
grounded on my queer subjectivity, teaching classes in this area of study
could be perceived as a legitimate desire, as well as a social need, in line
with the pedagogical ideas presented in the previous section. Yet, this
desire has been perceived as a source of trouble.
One could dismiss these comments, which also came from a
University manager present at the interview, as subtly homophobic.
However, I would argue that these comments also highlight normative
95
ideas of pedagogy in the neoliberal university, where pedagogy is

increasingly being constructed as something that should not be upset-
ting or troubling. According to Fraser and Lamble (2015), the new
economy of fees, funding and marketization in neoliberal British uni-
versities, positions students increasingly as consumers and teachers as
trainers. The recent cuts to funding for higher education in England
and the imposition of fees of up to £9000 per year, lend themselves to
an instrumentalist approach to education that turn students into cus-
tomers who are paying for a ‘service.’ Indeed, although “discourses of
managerialism, audit culture and performance indicators” (Fraser and
Lamble 2015, p. 63) are utilized by universities to encourage teachers
to engage in more cognizant teaching practices, these discourses can
also be used by universities to “close down rather than open space for
consideration of what happens in classrooms” (Fraser and Lamble 2015,
p. 63). Moreover, the neoliberal university tends towards the produc-
tion of a very specific subjectivity, which is “individualized, career-
driven and competitive” (Fraser and Lamble 2015, p. 63). This arguably
also means that students are less receptive of non-instrumentalized and
transformative pedagogical approaches. In this context, where students’
desires and expectations are constrained by narrow instrumentalist ped-
agogical frameworks, which are evident in the increased focus that many
university degrees in Translation Studies place on career, professional-
ization and the vocational aspect of translation, non-normative teach-
ing practices, and especially activities that are not assessed, are often
regarded by students as distractions. Student satisfaction is, thus, meas-
ured against the degree to which translation courses meet student’s aspi-
rations for a career (inside or outside of the university).
As Allen (2015) states, conventional understandings of learning focus
on the fact that learning should be experienced as pleasurable, and the
learner should feel a sense of satisfaction for having grasped something
valuable. Yet, feminist and queer pedagogy describe learning as also being
characterized by a feeling of discomfort and dissatisfaction. Being criti-
cal of norms and seeking to cross boundaries requires “students to leave
their comfort zones and confront issues that are not nice to know” because
these concerns involve “demanding political issues such as sexism, hom-
ophobia, racism and hate speech” (Naskali and Keskitalo-Foley 2019,
96
M. Baldo
p. 107). According to feminist and queer pedagogy, instead of simply solv-

ing problems, students should learn to engage in critical ways of thinking.
Moreover, disagreement is regarded within feminist and queer pedago-
gies as a way of achieving a deeper understanding of contemporary issues.
Similarly, Kumashiro (2002, p. 43), commenting on queer pedagogy, states
that “learning is about disruption and opening up to further learning, not
closure and satisfaction.” Thus, the comments I received about my queer
and feminist translation classes by colleagues and managers can be under-
stood through these critical paradigms as the neoliberal British university’s
fear of unsettling and dissatisfying their students as customers. Such com-
ments also reveal an understanding of knowledge as pre-packaged, which
is contrary to the idea of the co-construction of knowledge and critical
self-awareness put forward not only by feminist and queer pedagogy but
also by those translator’s training studies that are driven by a politicized
notion of translation. In those studies, for example, emphasis is placed on
the fact that translators are confronted with the trouble of having to con-
stantly make decisions and to critically consider the moral complexities
posed by “seemingly innocent translation situations” (Floros 2011, p. 89).
Moreover, the comments on my teaching practices, described above, also
reveal a paternalistic and colonial understanding of non-western countries,
as somehow intrinsically un-queer, and do not take into account that queer
translation studies aims to problematize hegemonically defined concepts,
beginning with the problematization of the term queer itself as the product
of Western Anglophonic cultures (Spurlin 2017).
Queer pedagogy thus highlights the troubling aspect of education,
and its potential unsafe nature, as it connects education to the notion of
queer desires. Desire can be risky. Queer pedagogy (see Fraser and Lamble
2015) pushes towards creating space for student’s desires, non-prescribed
by the teaching curriculum, that can open space for transformative pol-
itics. As an example, after a few of my translation theory classes that I
taught as part of the University of Hull’s module ‘Issues in Translation
Studies,’ a student expressed the desire to run extra sessions, organized
by himself and his peers, to continue the heated debates that originally
began in class but could not be continued because of time constraints.8
Furthermore, universities should also cater for the desires of its teachers.
With regards to this, I must admit that the tacit beliefs by colleagues and
97
line managers surrounding the content of my research resulted in partial

self-censorship. I also resisted being open about my positionality and per-
spectives with students9 for fear that this would impact negatively on my
own career and livelihood as a precariously employed academic, who at
the time was employed on a two-year temporary contract that could have
been (and eventually was) subjected to non-renewal.
However, I also implemented the suggestions made by Fraser and
Lamble (2015) and bell hooks (2010), who encourage the use of “queer”
conversations that allow teachers and students to explore ideas in an
open and fluid way. This pedagogical method simultaneously has the
effect of challenging hierarchies and the binary between students and
teachers, by allowing students to give voice to things that might other-
wise feel unnameable. An example of this is a class I taught as part of
my MA module on ‘Audiovisual Translation’ (mentioned above) at the
University of Leicester, where we openly discussed the subtitling of a
term like ‘gay’ (and other LGBTQ terms) into Arabic within a video clip.
Although some Saudi Arabian students dismissed the task as impossible
(saying that the video would not have been broadcast in their country
and thus it was a non-realistic activity), I encouraged students to con-
sider the possibilities for translation in this context (after all, the video
could have been circulated on the internet). The class was uncomfortable
because, in addition to my own distress, I could sense the distress of an
Arabic/British gay student at the comments made by his peers, which, in
dismissing gay issues as a taboo or an unthinkable topic, came across as
homophobic. However, this class arguably exemplifies what it means to
try to open up a space for the imagination of other possibilities.
Adopting a queer pedagogy thus means to be prepared to deal with
trouble and with our own vulnerability as lecturers. However, it also
means to open up a space for new possibilities and for meaningful
reflection, since queer pedagogy has to do with pleasure, desires and
needs that might otherwise be silenced within the context of the neolib-
eral university. As Fraser and Lamble (2015, pp. 73–74) state, “a queer
pedagogy is one that is continually willing to take risks, to venture into
the unknown and to make space for non-normative desires in the class-
room. It is one that openly invokes the pleasures of learning even when
this involves risks and dangers.”
98
M. Baldo
These risks and dangers also relate to the place occupied by teach-
ers within the institutions where they work. In my case, like in the case
of many other lecturers on zero hours and/or temporary contracts, my
precarious contract meant that I occupied the position of a vulnerable
subject. Theorizations concerning queer and feminist pedagogy and
translator’s training in academia therefore cannot dismiss the importance
of looking at the social, economic and political positionalities of teach-
ers in the context of the neoliberal universities where they teach, since
teachers are increasingly affected by the austerity politics of such context.
Self-reflexivity and critical thinking, as advocated by feminist, queer ped-
agogy and translator’s training studies should, thus, also be directed at
the neoliberal university, which, as Critical University Studies have high-
lighted (Morrish 2018), is suffused with the same issues of gendered,
racial and sexual power that feminist and queer pedagogy, and politicized
approaches to translator’s training, critique.
6 Conclusion
This chapter has argued for the potential benefits of applying queer and
feminist pedagogical theories and practices to translation pedagogy,
by exploring the notion of possibilities and impossibilities of queer
and feminist pedagogies to inform a politicized approach to transla-
tor’s training. Furthermore, the chapter has proposed a notion of ped-
agogy as troubling and informed by desires—a pedagogical praxis that
is not interested in giving answers but in formulating questions. It
has argued that in order to be transformative and productive of social
change, queer and feminist pedagogical praxis, in the context of a polit-
icized translator’s training approach, needs to appeal to the notion of
desire. This notion of desire may be understood as being simultaneously
a pleasurable and a disruptive force, capable of generating a spark that
may ignite the potentialities that students and teachers bring to class.
Embracing this idea of pedagogy, I believe, can foster the process of crit-
ical self-reflexivity invoked by studies of translator’s training, with the
aim of nurturing translators who are capable of making an ethical inter-
vention in our contemporary society.
99
This pedagogy requires the recognition that “no one speaks, hears,
writes, reads, or acts from a neutral, objective position” (Wallace 2002,
p. 66), and therefore adopting a critical stance to translation, which is
informed by feminist and queer pedagogy, also involves critiquing the
non-neutrality of the institutions in which translation is taught.
Notes
1. A seminal work on queer theory is Butler’s (1990) Gender Trouble.
2. Universities have been labelled as such by Critical University Studies
(CUS), a new field of studies that takes a critical stance toward the neo-
liberal privatized model of higher education. It has emerged in the USA
and in the UK and in other countries confronting neoliberalism. See the
blog of scholar Liz Morrish who writers on the topic. https://academicir-
regularities.wordpress.com, accessed 2 December 2018.
3. These modules were respectively called ‘Introduction to Translation
Studies’ (2010–2012) in Birmingham, ‘Development of Translation
Studies’ and ‘Contemporary Theories of Translation’ in Leicester (2014–
2016), and ‘Issues in Translation Studies’ (2016–2018) in Hull.
4. For what concerns the MA, this module runs only for the first semester
at the University of Hull, contrary to Birmingham and Leicester where it
runs for two semesters.
5. Feminist translation principles could also be taught as part of another
class devoted to questions of post-coloniality and politicised approaches
to translation.
6. This discussion will be mainly based on my MA courses as the time ded-
icated to theoretical issues in translation within the BA programmes was
even scarcer.
7. At the University of Leicester in the years 2014–2016, MA classes in
Translation were composed of 30 students; students from China and
from Arabic countries represented two thirds of the class (about 20 stu-
dents or more).
8. Fraser and Lamble (2015) propose various activities for encouraging
students to formulate desires outside of the prescribed career-driven
desires; for example, by asking them to write notes at the beginning of
the semesters, store them for some time and eventually asking students
to comment on the evolution of their desires at the end of semesters.
100
M. Baldo
9. I do not necessarily think that every teacher has a duty to come out to
their students as it depends on circumstances and it is a personal decision.
However, what I denounce here is the fact that, in classes where discussion
of queer feminist matters arise, withholding this information might be
going against the desires and the political agenda of the lecturer involved.
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7
Gayspeak in the Translation Classroom
Irene Ranzato
1 Introduction
Against the backdrop of studies in second language acquisition with
audiovisual tools and with the aid of audiovisual translation (AVT) in
particular, this chapter illustrates the results of a translation test/question-
naire aimed at verifying how MA and BA students of translation (English
to Italian) respond to the translation of dubbed films and TV series fea-
turing characters using words related to homosexuality. After viewing
film excerpts in the original and dubbed versions, and being provided
with the transcripts of both texts, groups of varying numbers of students
(30–68) were asked to rate and to answer open-ended questions on the
dubbed versions of various audiovisual texts. Students were asked to offer
both their insights and their own, motivated, translation solutions. The
aims of this questionnaire and subsequent analysis are to shed light: (1)
on the degree of sensitivity and overall response to homosexuality-related
I. Ranzato (*) 
Sapienza University, Rome, Italy
104
I. Ranzato
issues by University students; (2) on the strategies adopted both by the

official adapters and by the students to bypass the objective imbalance
between the respective English and Italian homosexual lexicons (Ranzato
2012). The ultimate goal of this experience is to enhance students’ aware-
ness of gender-related issues in the translation classroom.
2 Language and Translation with Audiovisual

Texts: Enhancing Awareness
Audiovisual materials allow students to appreciate how native speak-
ers interact in a given cultural context, providing them with linguistic
cues, including regional and social accents, different idiolects from indi-
vidual characters or speech communities, as well as paralinguistic cues
(Díaz Cíntas and Fernández Cruz 2008, p. 202). Many experiments
have been carried out in order to analyze the advantages of using video
materials on the listening (see, e.g., Rubin 1990; Herron and Hanley
1992; Secules et al. 1992), but also on the writing and speaking skills
of students (Herron and Morris 1995). According to Díaz Cintas and
Fernández Cruz (ibid., p. 203), studies:
reinforce the idea that students who are taught a second language with
the extensive use of video improve their listening comprehension skills
better and faster than fellow students that are taught without being
exposed to video materials.
As for the intersection between translation studies and gender stud-

ies, Susam-Sarajeva notes (2014, pp. 161–162) that both are inter-
disciplinary fields that “have been interested in similar areas and have
encouraged research into a variety of neighbouring branches, such
as language, society, religion, literature, anthropology, and commu-
nication.” However, as regards awareness of gender-related issues in
the translation classroom, studies in the field are few and far between.
Among these, works by De Marco (2011) and Corrius et al. (2016)
are especially focused on audiovisual material used in the translation
classroom to enhance gender awareness. De Marco advocates for the
7 Gayspeak in the Translation Classroom
105
importance of encouraging students to question “the values, the sym-

bols, and the shared stereotypes of the culture to which they belong”
(2011, p. 152), and AVT can be a precious instrument in the process.
Important as it has grown to be as a didactic tool (see, e.g., different
approaches included in Díaz Cintas 2008), AVT has also, however,
undeniably played “a prominent role in the creation of stereotyping
and denigration” (De Marco 2011, p. 140), thus potentially encourag-
ing gender stereotypes and homophobic attitudes. It is therefore evident
that the educational potential of AVT needs to be boosted in order to
correct its own malfunctioning. The importance of stimulating students’
awareness in the translation classroom cannot be underestimated. As
von Flotow (1997, p. 14) remarks:
Gender awareness in translation practice poses questions about the links

between social stereotypes and linguistic forms, about the politics of lan-
guage and cultural difference, about the ethics of translation, and about
reviving inaccessible works for contemporary readers. It highlights the
importance of the cultural context in which translation is done.
The enhancement of gender-awareness and, more specifically, of issues

related to queer linguistics and the translation of queerness—an area
that has been the focus of recent attention even though “translation
studies have been slow to integrate fully the concepts and theoretical
instruments of queer theory” (Baer and Kaindl 2018, p. 14)—are at the
core of a didactic experiment involving students of translation (Italian–
English) at Rome Sapienza University, which will be illustrated and ana-
lyzed in the following sections.
3 Testing the Kids

As a contribution to this particular field of research, audiovisual texts
related to homosexual contents and presenting instances of gayspeak
have been the means of an experiment made in the course of my mod-
ules in English language and translation, held at the Dipartimento di
Studi Europei Americani e Interculturali of Rome Sapienza University,
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I. Ranzato
during the academic year 2017–2018. As mentioned in the introduc-

tion, the experiment was aimed at gauging both the students’ response
to original and dubbed audiovisual material and at encouraging alter-
native translation solutions. The test by means of a questionnaire was
administered to two different classes on three different days.
More specifically, the aim of the test was to verify: (1) the students’
degree of awareness of homosexuality-related themes as revealed overtly
or covertly in original film and TV dialogues; (2) their level of knowl-
edge of the original and translated gayspeak lexicon; (3) their abilities
to exploit suitable translation procedures to transfer some of these ele-
ments into Italian; and (4) their evaluation of the official adaptation for
dubbing, present on the respective DVDs.
The first was an MA class of 78 attending students. Of these, 44 took
part in the first part of the test (Group 1). Their ages ranged between
23 and 28 years, with three exceptions: three students of 35, 41 and
45 years, respectively, were also part of the same class. The second set of
questions was submitted to students of the same class, but this time 30
students were present (Group 2), aged 23–28 years (plus the 45-year-
old student). The second was a BA class in which 131 students were
normally in attendence.1 The third set of tests/questions was submitted
to 68 students (Group 3), with ages ranging from 20 to 25 years old,
but also including a 31-year-old and a 37-year-old student.
The English language and translation courses of this academic year
were focused on intertextually related texts (MA) and on codeswitching
(BA), and thus not on gender-related themes. The students learnt that
they were going to be tested on their reception of gay-related elements
only on the day of the test and with no prior preparation. Although
some (but by no means the majority of them) were familiar with my
general research interests and knew I often deal with issues related to
ideology, censorship and manipulation, it can fairly be stated that the
test caught most of the students unawares. This was done on purpose,
in order to obtain a response that could be as unvitiated as possible. For
the same reason, students were left free to choose whether to write their
name on the questionnaire or not, although they were asked to always
state their age.
107
Just the single scenes and not the whole films were shown, after a
brief explanation of the general context from which the dialogues were
taken. Most of the excerpts (all except the first) were purposely taken
from films and TV series that I previously had the occasion to ana-
lyze elsewhere. This was done for two reasons: (1) I wanted students
to work on audiovisual texts I could relate to, having examined them
from many points of view and (2) for the purpose of this chapter, com-
ments can be restricted to the experiment at hand and readers can be
referred to previous bibliography for an ampler discussion of the same
texts.
4 The Questionnaire
In this section, the organization and contents of the different tests/ques-
tionnaires administered to the various groups of students will be illus-
trated. Due to the significant amount of qualitatively interesting data
that have been collected, only some of the most relevant aspects can be
described and discussed.
4.1 Group 1, Scene 1
The first excerpt is a short scene from the film Dallas Buyers Club (Vallée
2016), which describes in highly realistic brushstrokes the real life of
Ron Woodroof, a heterosexual man who suffered and eventually died
from AIDS. Described as a homophobic man at the beginning of the
film, in the scene chosen for the students Ron is seen at the time of the
first diagnosis of his illness. In the excerpt, Ron has just met another
patient for the first time, a trans woman called Rayon, whom he
addresses using disparaging terms. Just 3 of the 44 students had previ-
ously seen the film, although most of them had heard of it.
This example was chosen expressly as an opener: it is the most
straightforward of the excerpts, in the sense that it does not pose any
problems of interpretation, and its dubbing adaptation into Italian is
quite close to the original meaning of the dialogue exchange.
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I. Ranzato
The students were asked to pay particular attention to the following

phrases uttered by Ron:
Original dialogue:
Ron: Get the fuck out of here, whatever you are, or I’ll kick you in the
fucking face. […]
Ron: All right, Miss Man, what you got?
Rayon: Full house. Jacks over threes.
Ron: Well, I’d have figured you for queens. Motherfucker!
Italian dubbing adaptation:

Ron: Levati subito dai coglioni, qualsiasi cosa tu sia, prima che ti spacchi
la faccia. […]
Sentiamo, signorinello, che cos’hai?
Rayon: Ho un bel full. Full di jack e tre.
Ron: Però, ti facevo più un tipo da regine, brutto stronzo.
Back translation:
Ron: Get the fuck out of here immediately, whatever you are, before I
break your face. […]
Let’s hear, Little Miss Man, what have you got?
Rayon: I have a nice full house. Full of jacks and threes.
Ron: Well, I’d have figured you more as a type for queens, piece of shit.
After listening to the original dialogue, the students were asked to

offer their own translation of these excerpts. After handing over their
work, they were shown the same scene in Italian and asked to rate the
dubbing as: (a) inappropriate; (b) insufficient; (c) acceptable; (d) good;
or (e) very good.
Results: The overall opinion on the dubbing by the 44 students was
positive, with ratings ranging from ‘acceptable’ (5) to ‘very good’ (3)
with a high majority of ‘good’ (36).
The students’ own translations replicated the irony and the ‘bina-
rism’ of the original “Miss Man” in several instances (21), either with
literal translations (Miss Uomo = Miss Man) and loans (Miss Man ), or
with other solutions such as Miss Macho or the more cumbersome lui-lei
109
(him-her) and Signora Uomo (Mrs Man). There were two occurrences
of more derogatory terms as in Mister Effemminato (Mister Effeminate)
and especially Signor frocetto (Mister little fag). In the rest of the
instances, the synthetical expression that combines the two sexes was
eliminated, thus losing much of the derisive irony of Ron’s original term
of address: principessa (princess), signorina (Miss), signorino (sir, young
master, as referred to a young boy), bellezza (beauty) are all solutions
that do not do justice to Ron’s sarcastic original term.
For what concerns the phrase containing the word queen (in the sense
of, usually effeminate, male homosexual), most of the students, similarly
to the Italian dubbing, translated the word literally, virtually losing the
double entendre (card/queer), as regine does not carry the same homo-
sexual reference in Italian, or at least not in the same mainstream way.2
Some respondents sought effective compensations, such as: pensavo che
te la facevi con le regine (I thought you messed around with queens),
or the similar in meaning pensavo andassi per regine. In one occurrence,
queen was translated into drag queen, a compound term more easily
recognizable by Italian people. In one occasion, the translation com-
pensated the use of the non-descript calque regine by adding a highly
derogatory term to translate the following ungendered swearword moth-
erfucker: checca di merda (shitty/fucking fag).
Finally, students were also free (but recommended) to write their
comments to the adaptation. Although in most cases the comments
were broadly focused on translational aspects (such as: “the translation is
coherent with the source text as it maintains a meaning close to the orig-
inal, without any particular ambiguities”3) or aimed at commenting in
terms of slang words and idiolects, some of the comments interestingly
made reference to prosody and voice, understanding that these elements
are integral components of audiovisual texts. Therefore, comments were
made on the more or less aggressive tone, or on the more or less effem-
inate tone of the respective dubbing actors, and similar remarks. This is
not at all an obvious outcome, since AVT has only recently delved into
matters of the ‘voice’ in translation (see, e.g., Bosseaux 2015, Sánchez-
Mompeán, forthcoming) and even more rarely into matters in connec-
tion with gender (but not queer) issues (Bosseaux 2008).
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I. Ranzato
The second scene shown to the first group of students was an excerpt
from the pilot episode of the TV series Six Feet Under (Ball 2001–
2005, discussed in Ranzato 2012, 2015, 2016, pp. 187–220), the
story of a family of undertakers described in crude, dramatic, but also
humorous tones. Only two of the students had seen the episode and
knew the series, although most of them had heard of it. In this scene,
a still closeted gay man, David, is talking with his mother, Ruth. This
example was chosen to gauge the students’ ability to grasp manipula-
tive and censoring practices in translation, as the Italian adaptation of
Ruth’s final phrase, in the following exchange, evidently distorts the
source text meaning in order to build a heteronormative discourse
(Ranzato 2012):
Original dialogue:
Ruth: Well, I’d much rather [your father] buy himself a fancy new hearse
than leave me for a younger woman, or a woman my age for that mat-
ter, or, heaven forbid, a man, like my cousin Hannah’s husband did.
God sure has dealt that woman some blows in this life.

Ruth: È comunque sempre meglio che si sfoghi con un’auto nuova piutto-
sto che tradendomi con una ragazzina o con una donna della mia età.
Gli uomini come il marito di mia cugina Hannah il cielo li dovrebbe
castigare. Il Signore ha riservato dure prove a quella povera donna.
Back translation:
Ruth: Anyway it’s always better that he satisfies himself with a new car
than betray me with a young girl or a woman my age. Heaven should
punish men like my cousin Hannah’s husband. God has reserved that
poor woman some hard trials.
Results: Opinions this time were mixed, with 7 students judging the
adaptation ‘inappropriate,’ 7 ‘insufficient,’ 11 ‘acceptable,’ 15 ‘good,’
and 2 ‘very good’ (2 students did not give an opinion), with the most
positive comments clearly not grasping the manipulation.
111
When one matches these ratings with the translation proposals and
with some of the comments, the picture becomes more interesting but
also more intricate: 35 students translated Ruth’s words semantically
well, thus apparently understanding the reference to the homosexual-
ity of Hannah’s husband. Ratings, however, and especially some of the
comments, did not seem to match this awareness. Few students wrote
explicitly of manipulation or censorship (just 12). The rest of the com-
ments mostly tackled translation problems in general terms with no ref-
erence to the sensitive issue at hand. A student declared explicitly that
they “did not get the full point of the phrase”, even if his/her translation
was semantically correct. Others expressed themselves in vague terms.
In the cases of a positive evaluation of the dubbing, the comment did
not reveal a real awareness of any form of censorship having occurred;
for example, in this case: “In the Italian adaptation some words have
been added to make the meaning of the text more explicit […]. [Ruth’s]
line expresses the woman’s thoughts but in my opinion the addition is
excessive.” This comment was puzzlingly matched to a correct transla-
tion of the phrase. In my opinion, the response to this particular test
reveals a low level of awareness of manipulative dubbing practices and
perhaps some degree of unawareness or even uneasiness in relation to
the subject at hand.
The test on Six Feet Under was completed by the transcription of two
other lines from the series, which included ‘gay’ culture-specific references:
one was the title of the sitcom Will & Grace (Kohan and Mutchnick,
1998–2006; 2017-in production), which notoriously features two gay
characters, and the other was the Californian town of West Hollywood, the
first city to create same-sex domestic partnership registration and various
related benefits for its residents. The test was meant to gauge the students’
familiarity with these cultural references, which were both eliminated
from the Italian official dubbing. All of the students were familiar with
the title of the sitcom and thus judged the Italian adaptation negatively.
The response to the second example was more varied, because only one
student declared that they knew and could explain the reference to West
Hollywood. At the same time, some of the students intuitively grasped
the value of the reference and, when proposing an alternative transla-
tion, offered some interesting solutions. One of them translated West
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I. Ranzato
Hollywood with San Francisco (also commonly associated with gay rights);
another one proposed Hollywood arcobaleno (rainbow) alluding to the
LGBT pride flag; while yet another student made a reference to the gay
pride movement.
Overall, students in this case seemed more alert to cultural specifici-
ties than to the suppression of more delicate issues.
The third scene shown to the first group of MA students are actually
two scenes taken from the (1959) film by Joseph Mankiewicz, Suddenly,
Last Summer (analyzed in Ranzato 2009). Just one of the students, a
cinéphile, knew the film, while, sadly, none of the others reported hav-
ing heard of it. Based on Tennessee Williams’s play, the story revolves
around the memory of Sebastian, a homosexual man (whose sexuality
the audience can suspect at times, but learns only for certain towards
the end of the film) who is never seen but only remembered, after his
death, by his cousin Catherine and his mother, Violet—the latter mor-
bidly attached to him. In the first scene, Catherine, a patient of the asy-
lum where her aunt is keeping her segregated, is talking to a nurse about
her deceased cousin’s tastes.
Original dialogue:
Nurse: I’m blond.
Catherine: Are you? Funny. We were going to blonds next. Blonds were
next on the menu. […] All last summer, Sebastian was famished for
blonds. Fed up with the dark ones. Famished for blonds. The travel
brochures he picked up were advertisements of blond northern coun-
tries. […] Fed up with the dark ones, famished for the light ones.
That’s the way he talked about people, as if they were items on a menu.
That one’s delicious-looking. That one’s appetizing. Or that one is not
appetizing. I think really he was half-starved from living on pills and
salads.

Infermiere: Io sono biondo.
113
Catherine: Davvero? Strano. Mi ricorda qualche cosa questo. Era il piatto

seguente del menù. […] Da parecchio Sebastian sognava capelli
biondi. Era stanco del sud. Agognava al nord. Aveva tanti foglietti pub-
blicitari e tutti vantavano la bellezza dei paesi nordici. […] Era osses-
sionato dal pensiero dei capelli biondi. Come parlava dei popoli, come
fossero le pietanze di un menu. Quelli devono essere ottimi, quelli
sono appetitosi, oppure quelli là non mi fanno proprio gola. Tanto più
sorprendente in lui perché viveva di pillole e di insalata.
Back translation:
Nurse: I’m blond.
Catherine: Are you? Funny. That reminds me of something. It was
the next dish on the menu. […] Sebastian had been dreaming
about blond hair for a long time now. He was tired of the South.
He longed for the North. He had many flyers and all boasted of the
beauty of Northern countries. […] He was obsessed by the thought
of blond hair. The way he talked about peoples, as if they were items
on a menu. Those ones should be very nice, those are appetizing. Or
those are not inviting. All the more surprising from him since he was
living on pills and salads.
In the second scene, and at the presence of Catherine’s doctor,

Catherine and her Aunt Violet have a violent altercation, as always rela-
tive to Violet’s son, Sebastian:
Original dialogue:
Violet: You were the stranger, the outsider, the destroyer. We were life.
Catherine: You fed on life. Both of you. Taking, taking. People were
object for your pleasure. That’s what you taught him and he taught
you. […]
Catherine: We were decoys.
Doctor: Decoys?
Catherine: For Sebastian. He used us as a bait. When she was no longer
able to lure the better fish into the net he let her go.
Doctor: Bait? For what? What were the better fish?
Catherine: We procured for him.
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I. Ranzato

Violet: Tu eri l’intrusa nella vita che io gli avevo dato.
Catherine: Che cosa gli hai dato? Prendere e solo prendere. Anche lui, non
sapeva fare altro che prendere. Ve l’eravate insegnato a vicenda, vero?
[…]
Catherine Sa che cosa eravamo? Eravamo richiami.
Dottore: Richiami?
Catherine: Sì, richiami. Solo a questo servivamo e quando lei non poteva
più servirgli come richiamo la piantò a casa.
Dottore: Sì, ma tutto questo a quale scopo?
Catherine: —
Back translation:
Violet: You were the intruder in the life I had given him.
Catherine: What did you give him? Taking, only taking. He, too, could
do nothing but take. You had taught each other, hadn’t you? […]
Do you know what we were? We were decoys.
Doctor: Decoys?
Catherine: Yes, decoys. That was our only use and when she wasn’t useful
any longer as a decoy, he left her home.
Doctor: Yes, but all this to what end?
Catherine: —(scene and soundtrack are edited out)
This time, students were not asked to translate the excerpts but, after
watching them in the original version and then in Italian, they had to rate
the dubbing and state which of the elements of the two dubbed dialogues
were, in their opinion, more distant from the source text. The dubbing of
the first scene was rated as ‘inappropriate’ by 4 students, ‘insufficient’ by
5 students, ‘acceptable’ by 18 students, ‘good’ by 12 students and ‘very
good’ by 1 student (4 students did not rate any of the excerpts). The
adaptation of the second scene was considered ‘inappropriate’ by 5 stu-
dents, ‘insufficient’ by 6 students, ‘acceptable’ by 11 students, ‘good’ by 7
students, ‘very good’ by 1 student (14 students did not rate the scene).
Surprisingly, these scenes, which were evidently submitted to a heavy
ideological manipulation that erased and rendered more confusing the
homosexual discourse that constitutes the backbone of this film (to
the point of cutting an unpleasant reference to the two women being
115
used by Sebastian to allure men), received positive ratings by a large

portion of the class (70.4% for the first excerpt and 43.2% for the sec-
ond excerpt). The comments reveal that only 11 students in the case of
the first excerpt, and 14 in the case of the second, judged the scenes,
in explicit terms, as heavily manipulated. The rest of the comments
either referred vaguely to translational hurdles or evidently missed the
point altogether, as, for example, in the following comments: “I would
have preferred the word esche (baits) rather than richiami (decoys),
also because in the original there is a reference to fishing”; “very good
adaptation, although the contrast between ‘dark’ and ‘blond’ is lost.
Sebastian is ‘fed up with the dark ones’ and this is repeated twice.
Because there is a repetition, I think that the contrast could be relevant
and should have been maintained, leaving the word scuri (dark)”; “the
translator replaces the contrast blond/dark hair with the one between
north/south. In addition, a phrase is repeated, as if to emphasize the
chaos in the mind of the protagonist, while in the translation this idea is
lost. The verbs ‘fed’ and ‘famished’ are repeated various times, so in my
opinion the repetition should have remained also in Italian, in order to
mirror her state of mind”; “the Italian text has been reformulated differ-
ently with respect to the text in English in order to render the text more
fluid to the ear.” One of the comments also revealed the unawareness of
the censoring cut (signalled on the DVD by the dialogue left in English
within the Italian dubbing), as the student commented that that par-
ticular phrase should not have been left in English because the reason
for the switch is difficult to understand for the audience.
More than in the former cases, the analysis of the students’ answers
reveals a high degree of unawareness of the manipulation related to sex-
ual contents in the dialogues and/or unwillingness by the students to
expand on these matters, preferring a more general, vague or purely lin-
guistic/translational approach to the analysis.
The fourth test was administered to a class of 30 MA students and

was, like part of the former test, meant to assess the viewers’ ability
116
I. Ranzato
understand editing procedures applied to the translated version in rela-

tion to gay themes. The scene shown to the students was a very short
excerpt from the film Cruising (Friedkin 1980), in which the main
character, a policeman who is investigating the New York leather scene,
applies some make-up in front of a mirror, preparing to go undercover.
The scene is mute in the original film. The target audience, on the other
hand, can hear over the scene the dubbed voice of the head of police
repeating a question he had asked at the beginning of the film: “How
would you like to go undercover?”. Interpreted (by Ranzato 2017) as
evidence of manipulation by the Italian adapters, aimed at normalizing
the protagonist’s growing ‘ambiguity’ (he is using make up in order to
go undercover and not because he is one of ‘them’—that is the message
that the Italian version appears to convey), the allusion seemed suita-
ble for testing the students’ alertness to this kind of editing procedures.
Only 6 out of 30 students grasped the allusion. The rest of the students
did not understand the reason for this operation, attempting various,
often improbable interpretations, such as the following: “The choice
could allude to the fact that, according to the editors, homosexuals do
not have an individual identity.” Other comments proposed explana-
tions linked to narrative or purely filmic reasons (“to create an atmos-
phere” and the like). Overall, the test confirmed the impression that
students do not easily connect the purely filmic code (i.e. editing in this
case) to linguistic or ideological shifts.
In this final test, the scene presented to a class of 68 BA students was

aimed at testing their ability to understand the full nuances and ulti-
mately to be able to translate the words of gayspeak. The class was
shown a scene from the TV movie Angels in America (Nichols 2003), a
story set at the time of Reagan politics, during the first major spreading
of the AIDS epidemic, and based on the seminal play by Tony Kushner.
Students were not informed of the title of the film before watching the
scene; however, nobody reported having seen or heard of the film once
the title was revealed. In the scene, two of the main characters, Louis
117
and Prior, have a conversation culminating in Prior confessing that

he suffers from AIDS. Students were asked to rate the dubbing of the
whole scene, but before that, they also had to translate the following
four lines from the dialogue, reported out of context below:
Original dialogue:
Louis: I always get so closety at these family things.
Prior: Butch, you get butch.
Prior: Oh, and by the way, darling, Cousin Doris is a dyke.
Prior: You don’t notice anything. If I hadn’t spent the last four years fellat-
ing you I’d swear you were straight.

Louis: Avrebbero capito e non volevo che se ne accorgessero.
Prior: Omosessuale. Nascondere sempre i difetti.
Prior: E, tesoro, per rimanere in argomento, la cugina Doris è lesbica.
Prior: Non l’hai notato. Se non fossero quattro anni che faccio sesso con
te direi che sei innocente.
Back translation:
Louis: They would have understood and I didn’t want them to realize.
Prior: Homosexual. Always hide the faults.
Prior: And, sweetheart, by the way, your Cousin Doris is a lesbian.
Prior: You didn’t notice. If I hadn’t spent the last four years having sex
with you I’d say you were innocent.
Students were asked not to search the internet but were provided
with the basic meaning of all the relevant words, taken from the Oxford
Dictionary of English online. The point of this exercise was, in fact, not
so much to test their previous knowledge of the respective words, but
their ability to find suitable terms to translate them into the target lan-
guage. This class demonstrated a higher degree of awareness of possible
manipulations of homosexuality-related words and themes, in compar-
ison with the MA class, expressed both in their rating of the film’s dub-
bing and in the discussion that ensued. This was partly due, probably, to
the fact that the situation described in the scene is one of overt homo-
sexuality. It portrays a gay couple in unambiguous terms. At the same
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I. Ranzato
time, the evaluation of the dubbing adaptation and the translation of

the gayspeak terms were as challenging as in the other instances, due to
the polysemy of some of the terms and to the history of social battles
that they sometimes carry with them and which are not easily transfer-
able into Italian. As far as the rating of the dubbing is concerned, 23
out of the 68 students considered the Italian adaptation ‘inappropriate,’
26 ‘insufficient,’ 16 ‘acceptable,’ while none deemed it ‘good’ or ‘very
good.’ The great majority of the class (72%) gave, then, negative opin-
ions, with only a smaller percentage regarding it an acceptable transla-
tion. This indicates that the students were aware that some degree of
manipulation was in place, as the discussion that followed also clarified.
As for the selection of Italian lexical items chosen to translate the
words of gayspeak, the task was not an easy one. As a preliminary state-
ment, one has to emphasize how the importance of lexical knowledge in
the translation classroom cannot be overestimated, as the knowledge of
a word carries with it a range of interrelated sub-knowledges:
knowledge of the spoken and written form, morphological knowledge,

knowledge of word meaning, collocational and grammatical knowledge,
connotative and associational knowledge, and the knowledge of social or
other constraints to be observed in the use of a word. (Laufer and Nation
2012, p. 165)
It is especially with the latter (“the knowledge of social or other con-

straints to be observed in the use of a word”) with which I am espe-
cially concerned here. I have already had the occasion to note elsewhere
(Ranzato 2012 and 2017) that the words of homosexuality at the dis-
posal of the translator from English into Italian are sparse in compari-
son with the richness of the English vocabulary. Zwicki (1997, p. 22)
writes of “an enormous number of lexical choices in the domain of
sexual orientation,” which is certainly very far from being the case in
Italian, especially if we do not count the words that Italian borrowed
from English (including, e.g., gay, transgender, coming out, which have
all been absorbed by Italian in more or less mainstream ways). This state
of things is in fact exactly portrayed by Zwicki’s following remark on
lexical gaps:
119
There are sometimes large gaps in the coverage of the set of lexical items.
When there is a large gap, many individuals in the domain do not fall
easily into any of the opposed categories. Gaps within domains are not
in any way unusual— they can be found even in very large sets of basic
colour words, for example—but they are especially prominent in domains
where the folk ideology of binary opposition holds sway, as it certainly
does in the domains of sex and sexuality. A great many people will be
located at some considerable distance from the “ideal types” (butch versus
fem(me), for instance). (ibid., p. 25)
In addition, as the same scholar further notes (ibid.), as with slang,

the words of homosexuality are constantly shifting and are often cir-
cumscribed to local and generational usages.
It would be impossible to account here for the great variety of
responses offered by the students, but we can indicate some general
trends. The term dyke, for example, is discussed by Zwicki (ibid., p. 22)
in the following terms:
Lesbian versus dyke. Here, too, many see a distinction, of behaviour ver-
sus identity or in a neutral versus an “in your face” stance or in degree of
“butchness”. Dyke is also, a reclaimed epithet, a term of derision that has
been to some extent rescued as an expression of pride. […] Dyke has fairly
recently been reclaimed; for some speakers in some contexts and for some
purposes, it is no longer an epithet.
The great majority of the students (46) did not go further than the
standard explanation of the word read in the dictionary’s entry and
translated dyke with the standard Italian lesbica (lesbian). Only nine stu-
dents resorted to the slang lella, thus demonstrating that they felt that
the word needed a different handling than the standard. However, lella
carries a very different load with respect to dyke. It is not, as dyke is, an
originally derogatory term that has been reclaimed and “rescued as an
expression of pride.” Translating dyke with lella thus shows more of a
translational effort but is a not a completely satisfactory solution. Most
of the other (12) proposals (one of the students did not translate this or
other words), suggest omosessuale (homosexual), gay, lesbicona (big les-
bian, a way to render the word more informal and derogatory), checca
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I. Ranzato
(fag, usually used for gay men) as possible translations, as well as the
more elaborate (and effective): a tua cugina Doris piace la vagina (your
Cousin Doris likes vagina).
In the case of the interesting word closety, which does not have a
direct equivalent in Italian, apart from two non-answers, and five
answers that appeared to have missed the point and meaning of the
phrase, the majority of the students answered with periphrases contain-
ing words along the lines of riservato (reserved). However, five students
decided to render the gay theme more explicit, by producing the fol-
lowing solutions: non mi comporto mai troppo da gaio (I never behave
too much as a gay), where gaio, the Italian literal translation of gay, has
probably a more humorous overtone than the plain, and more com-
mon, loan word gay; mi comporto sempre da non dichiarato (I always
behave as a closeted [gay]), a rather cumbersome but not ineffec-
tive solution; la mia parte gay è sempre repressa (my gay part is always
repressed); faccio sempre l’etero (I always play the hetero); non faccio mai
troppo il gay (I never act too much like a gay).
Butch was also felt as a translation hurdle by the students, as the
word, whose full meaning was grasped, does not have a mainstream
Italian equivalent,4 although it can be used as a loan word in more lim-
ited circles. It was never used as a loan word in this test by the students,
however, who generally preferred to use the word maschiaccio (tomboy)
or, in a few instances, macho. The sense in which maschiaccio is generally
employed in Italian, however, that of a ‘bad boy’ in a benign, playboy-
esque sense of the term, and especially the complete loss of Prior’s ironic
allusion (he is using butch to address a gay man, not a woman, as it
would normally be the case), do not seem to make this kind of transla-
tion completely satisfactory.
The last line of the transcription contained two sexual items: the not
exclusively gay-related fellating and the word straight. If the first was
invariably translated with the various words—standard and slang—
which express oral sex in Italian, the second was, apart from two excep-
tions, transposed with eterosessuale, the Italian equivalent of the standard
heterosexual, simply because there is virtually no other concise alterna-
tive in the target language. Murphy (1997: 43) reminds us that:
121
Today, straight is the catch-all antonym for all of the colloquial same-
sex orientation and identity labels (gay, lesbian, dyke, queer). The use of
straight as an antonym for this range of labels may have begun with its
contrast to queer in counterfeiting slang (Dynes, 1985) and/or through
the contrast of gay (‘promiscuous, prostituting’) and straight (‘chaste, vir-
tuous, respectable’). (Oxford English Dictionary [OED], v. XVI: 818)
It is perhaps with this old meaning of the word still ingrained that
two students translated straight with the dubious sano (wholesome) and
normale (normal).
Perhaps of more interest are some of the handlings of the appellative
darling, uttered by Prior. If the great majority of students (53) resorted to
the most common Italian translation of this word—caro (dear, darling),
tesoro (literally, treasure) and, in one case, amore (love)—some offered
other solutions that seemed devised as a way to compensate for the use
of the standard lesbica for dyke in the same sentence, thus showing an
awareness that something lost should somehow be balanced. Those solu-
tions included, for example, the use of teso, an abbreviation of tesoro; and
amo, a rarely used abbreviation of amore (not to be confused with the
more common, Roman, amò, with a final accent), the latter comple-
mented by an explicative footnote: “colloquial mode, used especially in
the LGBTQ community to address someone as ‘tesoro’ or ‘amore.’”
Overall, this last questionnaire, and the discussion that followed,
offered various insights on the students’ horizon of expectations, on
their ability to nuance certain words and to come to terms with themes
related to sexuality. In spite of a general openness and lack of shyness,
shown by the majority of these BA students, one of the questionnaires
was returned with no translations and with just this statement: “The
first sentence is too difficult and the last one is too vulgar.”
5 Possible Avenues of Didactic Experience

Contrary to the certainly effective and most often advocated approach
that privileges a gradual introduction to the topic of gender in its inter-
sections with language and translation (see, e.g., Susam-Sarajeva 2014),
122
I. Ranzato
what the tests illustrated above tend to demonstrate are the possible
benefits of an altogether different modus operandi. Being taken una-
wares, so to speak, by being confronted without prior preparation with
manipulative or simply unsatisfactory translations of words and themes
related to homosexuality, students may experience a minor shock, which
is beneficial in provoking them to question their assumed notions. A
course based on this experience would guide students through a thor-
ough analysis of both original and translated texts, testing the instru-
ments that the target language offers them to transfer these contexts
into their own culture and language. In the case of Italian, the com-
parative poverty of the homosexual lexicon at their disposal is itself a
motivation to explore all possible translation avenues by delving deep
into the sociocultural context from which the original words stemmed.
It is at this point that some introductory lessons on gender studies in
translation would help to raise the level of students’ awareness of this
topic. To enhance the linguistic/translational perspective of this type of
course, the following lessons could be organized to revolve around the
presentation of a single relevant word (i.e. closet ), exploring its etymol-
ogy, history, possible polysemic nuances, and use in different contexts.
Reflecting on the ways each relevant word can be translated without
seeing its sociocultural load compromised and by possibly incorporating
new resonances is a challenge that I am sure students are ready to wel-
come and that would naturally make them more alert to the potential
dangers of handling so-called sensitive issues with superficiality.
6 Conclusions
As Susam-Sarajeva (2014, p. 162) observes, class experiments such as
the one illustrated, encourage critical thinking on the relationship
between translation and gender and introduce “the central concepts
of gender-conscious approaches to translation,” “showing how these
approaches could be implemented in terms of certain translation strate-
gies” (ibid.).
123
Once it is clarified that we are dealing with a fictional speech com-

munity, one that has much to do both with natural conversation and
with other types of fictional texts (literary, theatrical, etc.; see Richardson
2010), audiovisual dialogues are ideal for educational purposes, and for
the specific purpose of translation and language learning, because they
help students to appreciate linguistic and cultural features in a practically
infinite variety of different settings and contexts, and to evaluate the dif-
ferent nuances at play, depending on the nature of the interactions.
Results, as the analysis has briefly shown, can be interpreted in var-
ious ways. Some of the students’ answers reveal a high degree of una-
wareness of the manipulation related to sexual contents in the dialogues
and/or unwillingness by the students to expand on these matters, pre-
ferring a more general, vague or purely linguistic/translational approach
to the analysis. Students seemed more alert to cultural specificities than
to the suppression of more delicate issues. Overall, the test confirmed
the impression that students do not easily connect the purely filmic
code (i.e. editing in this case) to linguistic or ideological shifts.
An experiment such as the one carried out in the translation class-
room revealed how complex students’ attitudes can be towards gen-
der-related issues. It has especially shed light on a somehow unexpected
outcome: translational skills and intuition are not always and not neces-
sarily matched with a deep awareness of the social implications of lan-
guage use. It has further revealed the importance of explaining how each
gender-related word has a history and a socio-cultural load that may not
be easily transferable to another lingua-cultural context.
This experience was only the first step on an educational path that
would hopefully lead students, after much discussion, work and expla-
nation, to gain insights into the construction and manipulation of gay-
speak features in screen texts, and give them the possibility to assess the
ideological influences at play in the act of translating these texts.
The data gathered from this experiment were many and multi-fac-
eted and they can be an invaluable source of assessment of the possible
avenues of research in teaching gender-related themes in the translation
classroom.
124
I. Ranzato
Notes
1. Students are free to attend or not attend classes.
2. Italian dictionaries do not normally mention this meaning of the word,
although gay glossaries (such as the one featured in www.gay.it) do.
3. My translations for all the students’ comments in Italian.
4. The slang word camionista, which is close to the meaning of butch, is not
generally known outside gay circles.
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2017-in production.
8
Indirect Sexism in John Grisham’s
Sycamore Row (2013): Unveiling Sexual
Inequality Through a Gender-Committed
Pedagogy in the Translation Classroom
José Santaemilia
1 Introduction
In the ongoing fight for sexual equality, discourse and translation are
key mechanisms. This paper describes a teaching experience within my
Legal Translation (English–Spanish/Catalan) class at the University
of Valencia. Students were required to translate some passages from
Sycamore Row (2013), a best-selling legal thriller by John Grisham. In
class, we analyzed and discussed these passages, and compared them
with the students’ versions as well as with the versions offered by Jofre
Homedes Beutnagel in the 2014 Plaza and Janés Spanish edition, enti-
tled La herencia.
My Legal Translation class is a third-year module (one semester) in
the four-year Translation and Interlinguistic Mediation degree at the
University of Valencia, whose main learning outcome is to provide
students with an introduction to the English legal system—that is, an
J. Santaemilia (*) 
University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain
128
J. Santaemilia
introduction to English legal culture and vocabulary, and their trans-

lation into Spanish and Catalan. The aim of the class exercise was to
focus not on hard-core legal texts—such as court rulings or complex
contracts—but on simpler, more enjoyable texts that pose few difficul-
ties in terms of legal terminology but that, nevertheless, offer an articu-
late picture of the legal system involved.
Analyzing and translating passages from Sycamore Row proved to
be illuminating in terms of socio-ideological concerns. Although its
main aim was to deal with legal vocabulary and institutions in a less
demanding way than other texts, part of the class time was devoted to
the ways sexual inequality and discrimination is spread through legal
language and translation. Class debates ended up revealing the propen-
sity of popular literature towards a diversity of instances of what Sara
Mills (2008) calls indirect sexism: “a more indirect or discourse level of
sexism […] which manages to express sexism whilst at the same time
denying responsibility for it” (Mills 2008, p. 12). In Sycamore Row, a
number of instances can be found of disparaging comments against
women, mainly through witty or ironical comments; these range from
passages depicting the inefficiency of lawyer Jake Brigance’s secretaries
(pp. 23–24) to passing remarks indirectly criticizing marriage- or divorce-
related legislation favouring women (pp. 30, 131), and from the harsh-
ness of courts when judging men’s sexual behavior (pp. 165, 343) to the
description of minor women-as-sexual-object characters (pp. 199, 343).
2 Legal Language and Translation as Sites

of Gender-Conscious Reexamination
of Reality
Over the last few decades there has been a reconceptualization of legal
texts, and legal translation, in terms of their generic values, their vocab-
ulary and their ideological values. Historically confined to the territo-
ries of neutrality and objectivity, there is a traditional—or “normative”
(Goodrich 1987, p. 31)—theory of law that views legal language
as characterized by “a belief in the power of Reason and the inherent
8 Indirect Sexism in John Grisham’s Sycamore Row (2013) …
129
uniqueness and coherency of stable individuals and a belief in the prin-

ciples of law as being objective, absolute, eternal and universal” (Vidal
2013, p. 182). This model goes clearly against the reality of today’s
unstable, hybrid, inequality-ridden world, and this invites us to “chal-
lenge legal orthodoxies and the very idea of justice by emphasizing the
political ideologies that lie behind legal reasoning” (Vidal 2013, p. 183).
Legal language and translation are—and should be—more ideologically
committed than they were considered to be in the past.
In contrast to earlier conceptualizations, legal language is increasingly
considered as “slippery, fluid, and highly unpredictable” (Wagner et al.
2014, p. 32). Legal language and legal meanings are more unstable and
indeterminate; and naming, defining and translating new socio-ideological
realities (abortion, same-sex marriage, or violence against women, among
others) is becoming more difficult and problematic day by day (see
Santaemilia 2009; Santaemilia and Maruenda 2013, on the battle for legal
terminology around same-sex marriage legislation in Spain).
In fact, today there is a struggle between a conservative and a more
progressive view of law; while for the former, “laws are projected as truth-
ful, unambiguous and thus unmovable,” for the latter, “they are simply
texts, in essence very similar to literary texts” (Vidal and Martín Ruano
2003, p. 145). This demonstrates a discursive or cultural turn in human-
ities and social sciences, which points to a crystallization of new ideas
about justice, truth, gender, ideology, identity or sexuality. The same
struggle between old and new positions is to be found in the field of
translation, as most of the handbooks or publications on the didactics of
legal translation still revolve around the concepts of fidelity, equivalence,
neutrality, objectivity and stable meanings. Vidal and Martín Ruano
(2003, p. 147) speak of a “pressure for equivalence,” which favours con-
ceptual coincidence and a literal form of translation. This traditional
view requires not only complete invisibility on the part of translators, but
also no intervention or commitment—no engagement in the texts to be
translated or in the consequences thereof (see Martín Ruano 2009).
In the wake of a ‘discursive’ or ‘cultural’ turn, new ideas have been
brought about in translation studies (from approaches like decon-
struction, feminist translation, cultural translation, activist translation,
and others) (see Castro 2010), calling into question key notions like
130
J. Santaemilia
equivalence, faithfulness, accuracy or neutrality. Translating is no longer

seen (at least monolithically) as neutral or innocent, no longer seen as a
detached enterprise or activity; rather, it is seen as an act of negotiation,
of intervention, even of manipulation, which strives to find a balance
between all the ideological profiles involved in the act of translation.
Paradoxically, as suggested by Martín Ruano (2009), an acritical
implementation of a ‘neutrality’ paradigm in translating legal texts may
in fact end up leading to personal or social disadvantage for the less
powerful users (or consumers) of translated documents. Translation—
and especially legal translation—is an act of linguistic, discursive and
ideological mediation in a public, institutional setting where social (and
symbolic) capital is gained (or lost). At the beginning of the twenty first
century, there is room to believe that translation should strive to favour
the poor, the disadvantaged, the marginal or subordinated groups—
those affected by sexual inequality, by the injustices of the legal, political
or economic elites. What must be demanded from translators is an ethi-
cal attitude, which involves—following Eco (2003)—honesty, responsi-
bility and loyalty, rather than accuracy. As stated by Pym (2010, p. 170):
Since translators cannot help but take position—since even neutral

positions have to be created—, their ethics should break with passive
non-identity, forcing them actively to evaluate the texts they work on,
making them take on a major degree of responsibility for the texts they
produce.
In his study on official (or sworn) translation from English into Spanish,
Mayoral (2000, p. 315) underlines the fact that “the translator feels the
tension between different ways of translating and different ‘fidelities’ and
must come to intermediate translation solutions.” Venuti posits an “eth-
ics of location” whereby “the cultural authority and impact of translation
vary according to the position of a particular country in the geopoliti-
cal economy” (Venuti 1998, p. 187). More boldly, feminist translation
practitioners (von Flotow 1991; Massardier-Kenney 1997) have sug-
gested strategies like prefaces, footnotes, supplementing, resistance, col-
laboration between author and translator, and even hijacking—that is
131
“the deliberate intervention in a text in order to incorporate contempo-

rary feminist politics, where there are none, or nothing very visible, in
the source text” (von Flotow 2005, p. 46). Larkosh proposes a more spe-
cific “ethics of the first person,” which conceptualizes the translator as “a
complex, multifaceted, embodied and continually evolving cultural and
linguistic entity, with desires, passions and political engagements that
extend far beyond the act of translation” (Larkosh 2017, p. 157).
These proposals have been reinforced by a (re-)emergence of the
figure of the translator as a subject of attention and inquiry in the
so-called translator studies (Chesterman 2009). Translators are increas-
ingly more visible, and they are first-rate agents in the world of
mediation, which means they are active, critical and are undoubt-
edly influenced by their own social, political, ideological baggage.
Manipulation is therefore inevitable (Santaemilia 2005), as it is inher-
ent in all human beings and to all human experiences. Any translation
embodies the values, prejudices, beliefs, experiences and ideologies of its
translator; if it is done honestly, then it constitutes a faithful rendering
of the source text.
Choosing a legal term is not a neutral, dispassionate, straightfor-
ward action, but rather a result of inner struggle within each translator.
Take, for instance, the variety of naming practices around the recogni-
tion of rights for same-sex couples: shall we call them (gay/ homosexual)
marriages or rather civil partnerships? How should we refer to a child
born to parents who are not married to each other: illegitimate child,
bastard or simply child? Translators are constantly faced with two basic
alternatives—either help perpetuate the imbalances and asymmetries
found in real life (whether political, social, sexual, legal) or, rather, resist
and counterbalance those very asymmetries (see Martín Ruano 2009;
Santaemilia 2009, or Santaemilia and Maruenda 2013). This ethi-
cal (and political) stance is probably one of the major contributions of
translation practice towards a more egalitarian society.
Although a very long tradition of translation studies has tried to
impose the idea that translation is “simply an act of faithful reproduction”
(Tymoczko and Gentzler 2002, p. xxi), today new approaches in the-
ory and new attitudes in professional settings (see Reimóndez 2017) are
132
J. Santaemilia
favouring a more ethical translation, in tune with an ever-changing world,

characterized by crises, ambiguities, asymmetries, power differentials,
growing subordinated groups and, simultaneously, the perverse workings
of political and economic elites.
All this, in turn, clearly affects gender-related issues. Translation is a
key instrument in generating re-readings and re-evaluations of gender-
related legal terms, thus promoting new understandings of what it is to
be a woman; or to be gay, bisexual or transsexual; or to marry or enter
a civil partnership with a person of the same sex; or to assert one’s right
to one’s body and one’s reproductive rights. The prime importance of
translation for a gender-egalitarian agenda lies in its “power to dissemi-
nate new ways of understanding our contemporary reality beyond stable
meaning” (Vidal 2013, p. 187), as well as to reinterpret traditional dog-
mas associated with identities, sexuality or morality. A gender-conscious
or a feminist-oriented pedagogy in translation studies is instrumental
in reexamining—and perhaps reshaping—contemporary legal realities
along more egalitarian lines (see Sect. 4).
3 Legal Thrillers; Or the Popularization

of Unequal Gender Hierarchies
Legal thrillers are perhaps one of the most popular forms of genre fic-
tion, dealing with the legal universe (crimes, lawyers, judges, courtroom
scenes, hearings, trials) and offering powerful, if simplified, discourses
on societal moral norms. A legal thriller—or a courtroom novel—can
be generally described as “a crime-fiction subspecies focusing on the
legal procedures in connection with crime” (Sauerberg 2016, p. 2) and,
over the last two decades, has been perhaps one of the best-selling lit-
erary genres, thanks to world-famous novelists like Scott Turow, Steve
Martini and John Grisham.
From a didactic point of view, Campos (2007) calls them ‘soft’ legal
texts—that is, general or literary texts (newspaper stories, crime fiction,
courtroom dramas etc.) that contain a limited number of legal special-
ized terms, but which keep a legal flavour, and an appearance of truth,
133
all throughout. Despite a canonical literary criticism that does not

regard them very highly, in our translation module legal thrillers have
proved to be very useful for teaching the key legal terminology, as well
as the main structure of the judicial system, derived from the English
common law tradition.
Perhaps one of the defining traits of popular fiction is that it “both
reflects social meanings/mores and, perhaps more importantly, inter-
venes in the life of society by organizing and interpreting experi-
ences which have previously been subjected only to partial reflection”
(Pawling 1984, p. 4). In summary, popular texts are instrumental in
transmitting and reproducing sex-related stereotypes, and Sycamore
Row is no exception. Mainstream contemporary literature tends to
avoid blatant or overt forms of gender asymmetries (“blatant exclu-
sionary gate-keeping social practices, physical violence against
women, and misogynistic verbal harassment and denigration”—Lazar
2005, p. 9) and offers instead more insidious forms called ‘subtle sex-
ism’ (Swim et al. 2004; Lazar 2005; Chew and Chew 2007) or ‘indi-
rect sexism’ (Mills 2008)—that is, covert, subtler forms of sexism that
reinforce and perpetuate traditional gender roles and stereotypes. This
new kind of sexism is manifested indirectly by means of subtle dis-
course features (humour, presuppositions, conflicting messages, scripts
and metaphors, collocations, and androcentrism) that help transmit
sexist attitudes in a veiled way.
Crime fiction “began essentially as a men’s genre” (Irwin 2002, p.
264) and, although a new female detective fiction (Mizejewski 2004)
has been affirming itself over the last few decades and an important
number of women writers have successfully turned into best-selling
authors (PD James, Sue Grafton, Sara Paretsky, Patricia Cornwell),
the genre has remained essentially a men’s genre, revealing “the unmis-
takable sexism and misogyny in the novels in this genre” (Jaber 2015,
p. 5). From that perspective, popular texts constitute “gold mines for
cultural studies because they tap into our fantasies and assumptions
about gender, power, and sexuality” (ibidem), thus basically confirming
mainstream values about men and women, and about the imbalance of
power and knowledge between men and women.
134
J. Santaemilia
4
Sycamore Row in Translation, a Potential
Site for Unveiling Indirect Sexism
For one of the sessions of my Legal Translation (English–Spanish/
Catalan) class at the University of Valencia, students were required to
translate some passages from Sycamore Row (2013), with the aim of
getting familiar with a number of basic legal terms and institutions in
the USA. In class, we analyzed selected passages from Grisham’s book
and students compared their own translations with those offered by
Jofre Homedes Beutnagel in the Plaza and Janés 2014 edition, entitled
La herencia [Eng. ‘the inheritance’].
Sycamore Row was published in 2013, a sequel to Grisham’s first
book, A Time for Killing (1987), and presents the story of two lawyers
(Jake Brigance and his assistant Ellen Roark) who fought in court for
the acquittal of a black man (Carl Lee Hailey) who killed the men who
had raped his 10-year-old daughter. The recent sequel features the late
Seth Hubbard, a timber tycoon in Mississippi who has hanged him-
self from a sycamore tree due to a painful terminal illness and out of
remorse for his father’s lynching and hanging of a black landowner,
Sylvester Lang, and for the unjust treatment given to Sylvester’s family.
Seth Hubbard—who hanged himself from the same sycamore tree from
which Sylvester was hanged—leaves a holographic will, leaving nearly
all his fortune to his own employee, Lettie Lang, Sylvester’s grand-
daughter. In order to do so, Seth Hubbard replaced a previous will that
allocated all his money to his own two children. The ensuing trial brings
about issues relating to the racist attitudes towards the black population;
the testamentary capacity of an old, dying man; the suspicion that the
old man and his employee were having sexual relationships which, nat-
urally, affected his testamentary decisions; the surprise and discrediting
witnesses; and so on.
Reading this book proved really useful, as Grisham “liberally seasons
his pages with legal jargon and procedure” (Swirski and Wong 2006, p.
318), making him an apt author for a legal translation class. The exer-
cise ended up providing a wider focus on socio-ideological concerns,
particularly those connected to sexism and gender-based discrimination.
135
John Grisham manages—through humour and irony—to portray

women as unprofessional in the legal field, as dangerous objects of men’s
desire, as a source of danger and trouble, and so on. In this teaching
experience, students’ attention was directed to those examples contain-
ing traces (usually indirect) of sexism, linguistic discrimination and
androcentric views; they were invited to produce translations that were
both accurate and, at the same time, committed to equality and jus-
tice. In other words, students were invited to produce active and activist
translations striving to achieve sexual justice and equality.
Due to space restrictions, only one passage will be dealt with at length
here, containing what could be hypothesized as ‘subtle sexism’ (Swim
et al. 2004; Lazar 2005; Chew and Chew 2007) or ‘indirect sexism’
(Mills 2008). It is precisely at the pre-translation stage (see Maruenda
and Santaemilia 2012)—a key step in the professional management of
translation commissions, involving such issues as careful reading, doc-
umentation, and discussion, among others—when the ideological ele-
ments of the text are assessed and weighed up. This involves systematic
attention to both textual and contextual information; drawing attention
to those linguistic, textual and discursive traits peculiar to the source text
that are likely to constitute difficulties and problems for any translator.
At this phase, ideological, cultural or historical considerations are essen-
tial, and the ethics of the translator is paramount. Over the last few years,
translators and researchers have increasingly interrogated the ethical basis
of the profession. Tymoczko (2007, p. 213) views translation as “a form
of political and ideological activism,” while Inghilleri and Maier (2009,
p. 101) emphasize the heightened awareness within translation studies of
“the responsibility of the translator as an active agent in geopolitical con-
flicts.” There is a growing literature revolving around the (still unresolved)
questions of ethical responsibility in translation; of translators’ (in)visibil-
ity and agency (or lack thereof ); of social, political or sexual activism in
translation; of personal integrity; and so on.
If we truly believe in a gender-equal world, this must show in our
translations. Overt (or covert) sexist and misogynistic representations
may be subverted (Levine 1983; Lotbinière-Harwood 1991), resisted
(Massardier-Kenney 1997), downtoned (see Santaemilia 2005), or
even omitted (see von Flotow 1991) in translation, from a variety of
136
J. Santaemilia
feminist-oriented or gender-conscious approaches. None of these

options will constitute a novelty in the long history of translation, as all
of them have been put into practice since the first act of translation was
carried out.
Passage # 1: Lawyers’ secretaries, an incompetent lot
There had been so many. He had hired young ones because they were
more plentiful and worked cheaper. The better of those got married and
pregnant and wanted six months off. The bad ones flirted, wore tight
miniskirts, and made suggestive comments. One threatened a bogus
action for sexual harassment when Jake fired her, but she was arrested
for bad checks and went away.
He had hired more mature women to negate any physical tempta-
tion, but, as a rule, they had been bossy, maternal, menopausal, and
they had more doctors’ appointments, as well as aches and pains to talk
about and funerals to attend.
(Chapter 3, p. 24)
Spanish translation:
[…] Las mejores se casaban, se quedaban embarazadas y pretendían

estar seis meses de baja. Las peores tonteaban, se ponían minifaldas
ceñidas y hacían comentarios insinuantes. Una de ellas, a la que Jake
despidió, le amenazó con una falsa denuncia de acoso sexual. […] las
había contratado maduras, para evitar las tentaciones físicas, […] man-
donas, maternales, menopáusicas y tenían más citas médicas, amén de
más achaques y dolores sobre los que hablar, y más entierros a los que
acudir.
(capítulo 3, p. 29)
This passage presents a brief, though complete, catalogue of the

defects of all secretaries. No (female) secretary is satisfactory, whether
young or “more mature.” On the one hand, among the flaws of the
young secretaries are the facts that they get married, get pregnant, flirt,
wear miniskirts, make suggestive comments, or even complain about
sexual harassment. On the other hand, the deficiencies of the older
137
secretaries constitute a mixture of their character traits (“bossy”), una-

voidable physiological traits (“maternal,” “menopausal”), their top-
ics of conversation (“aches and pains”), as well as the reasons for their
appointments (“doctors’ appointments,” “funerals”). Apparently, no
positive trait can be detected in detectives’ secretaries—while young
ones are hired “because they were more plentiful and worked cheaper,”
more mature ones are hired “to negate any physical temptation.” Both
comments are discriminatory and/or sexist, to say the least, but they are
written in a humorous tone.
Here the ‘women as professionally incompetent’ script is activated,
reinforcing the gap between competence (represented by male detec-
tives) and incompetence (represented by female secretaries). This is
coupled with another script—that is, that men are naturally linked to
sexual activity, or in other words, that they cannot avoid sexual advances
or even harassment. In this case, the reason why Jake Brigance changes
secretaries from time to time is “physical temptation,” undoubtedly trig-
gered by women. Both scripts, repeated so often, have become routi-
nized common knowledge in our culture.
This passage constitutes a pool of the most conservative prejudices
levelled at women throughout history. What is striking is the recurrence
of the stereotype, and what is worrying is the enormous power of popu-
lar literature—and legal thrillers are among the most conspicuous forms
of popular literature—to disseminate taken-for-granted prejudices and
stereotypes that are detrimental to women in their fight for full equality
with men.
This passage is so short and straightforward—in the women’s actions
depicted and in the women’s traits described—that the students see no
alternative but to, whenever possible, soften some of the key nouns and
adjectives in the text. Efforts were made by students to provide softer
synonyms but no agreement was finally reached, and the solutions in
the published translation were accepted as the most reasonable ones.
A couple of minor things were modified: when referring to married
secretaries who “wanted six months off,” milder solutions like pedían
seis meses de baja [Eng. “asked for six months off”] or simply tenían seis
meses de baja [Eng. “took six months off”] were considered, the latter
being finally adopted. As for the clichéd image of women who “wore
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J. Santaemilia
tight miniskirts,” most students suggested just leaving the term mini-
falda [Eng. “miniskirt”]. Once again, indirect sexism proves difficult to
avoid or circumvent in translation, just as the published version of a
text carries with it an authority that is, perhaps, difficult to ignore.
Translation constitutes one of the most powerful ways of identifying
and, later on, challenging the sexist manifestations of reality. As with
the previous passages, our students commented at length on these con-
siderations, and agreed that something should be done through trans-
lation. Admittedly, they were reluctant to act boldly (i.e. ‘hijacking’ the
text or omitting certain elements) but they also believed that an ethical
translation should lead them to a careful reconfiguration of the trans-
lated product. Unlike with overtly sexist forms (clearly discredited),
they found it difficult to intervene in the case of indirect forms of sexist
discourse. As with the other passages, they found downtoning fully jus-
tified, and ethically necessary, since it is commonly done with the trans-
lation of sexual language (Santaemilia 2005). The boldest decision a few
students would be ready to take was to render some passages insubstan-
tial, almost ambiguous, in order for their translation to accommodate
their ethical principles concerning sexism and discrimination.
5 Concluding Remarks: The Translation

Classroom as an Instrument for a Feminist,
Gender-Committed Pedagogy
The translation exercise with different excerpts from Sycamore Row has
proved the difficulty of fighting sexism head-on in a legal text—in this
case, in a ‘soft’ legal text, a popular legal thriller by John Grisham. This
novel has been very useful in providing students with a basic intro-
duction to the English system, legal vocabulary and institutions in a
less demanding way than other ‘hard’ legal texts, In the text we have
found a number of passages with disparaging comments against women
through ironical or witty comments—that which Sara Mills (2008) calls
‘indirect sexism’.
139
In the debates generated by the texts translated, one of the main real-
izations has been the enormous power of the translation classroom, if
inspired by a feminist, gender-committed pedagogy, to unveil forms of
indirect sexism and, subsequently, activate a growing awareness of the
need for an honest, ethical individual response through translation.
Maier devotes an essay to “encourage translators to consider the ques-
tion of gender with regard to translation practice” (Maier 1998, p. 95).
Translation as a didactic tool can be used to interrogate not only the
linguistic structures of the original, but also its (androcentric) logic, and
in this respect both feminist translation strategies (von Flotow 1991;
Massardier-Kenney 1997) and a feminist pedagogy (Shrewsbury 1993;
Ergun and Castro 2017) will be most useful. An ethics of responsi-
bility (Vidal and Martín Ruano 2003) or an ethics of the first person
(Larkosh 2017) invite translators to go beyond the absolute require-
ments of faithfulness and neutrality, in order to assume their own
specific ideological commitments; for example, to truth, to justice, to
gender equality.
The perpetuation of sexist scripts and associations in popular lit-
erature certainly has a damaging effect on society, and on the cause of
gender equality. We may wonder whether translation can prevent this.
Probably the burden is too heavy, but translation, undoubtedly, forces us
to re-evaluate the beliefs, values, assumptions and clichés of all texts and,
consequently, to take up a position and (hopefully) produce a commit-
ted, ethical text. While mass literature is a very popular commodity and
its ideological values are easily and unreflexively swallowed, it is trans-
lation that always adds the possibility of critical reflection, of casting a
further look at all types of texts. Students were undoubtedly aware of
this potential, and were presented with a range of feminist- or gender-
informed strategies, but were mostly unable to put them into practice.
While critical reflection was carried out, very few practical steps were
taken to confront sexism through translation. Undoubtedly, more time
and experience are needed in order to develop an independent ethical
attitude.
140
J. Santaemilia
When confronted with the expression of covert or ‘indirect’ forms of

sexism, a feminist, gender-committed pedagogy will be extremely use-
ful. The translation classroom may become a privileged locus of anal-
ysis, resistance and rewriting of discriminatory linguistic practices. It
may become a teaching environment in which some of the strategies
put forth by feminist translators (von Flotow 1991; Massardier-Kenney
1997) are applicable as a response to indirect sexism. It may be an envi-
ronment in which a first-person ethics (Larkosh 2017) is invoked and
exercised with honesty and a sense of commitment. Stimulated by the
conviction that “[t]he classroom remains the most radical space of pos-
sibility in the academy” (Hooks 1994, p. 12), Ergun and Castro (2017,
p. 94) claim that translation studies, and most particularly feminist
translation studies, “[allow] us to reflect on the conditions of femi-
nisms’ emergence and development as historically situated responses to
different regimes and experiences of marginalization.” Besides, Maier
(2003, p. 159) holds that “the purpose of translation education is to
enable students to translate with self-awareness.” Our translation exer-
cise proved to be an opportunity for generating an engaged teaching/
learning experience, as it aimed to encourage an honest commitment
with self, with the texts under study, with others, with the community,
with movements for social change, with equality. We concur with Ergun
and Castro (2017, p. 107) on the view that “feminist translation is a
productive pedagogical tool to promote equality, social justice and sol-
idarity in and beyond the classroom.” A feminist, gender-committed
translation classroom constitutes a solid, promising tool for teaching
(and exercising) equality and social justice in difference, for unveiling
indirect sexist practices and instilling the basic principles in our stu-
dents for them to generate (in due course) alternative, more egalitarian
rewritings. Translation is, ultimately, a perpetually renewed invitation to
critically re-read, re-evaluate and re-express source-text discriminatory
discourses in another language.
141
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9
Ideological Transfer in the Translation
Activity: Power and Gender in Emma
Donoghue’s Kissing the Witch
María Amor Barros del Río and Elena Alcalde Peñalver
1 Introduction
The role of the translator as a cultural mediator has been widely
acknowledged (Bedeker and Feinauer 2006; Katan 2016; Nida 1998)
as well as the use of translation as a form of resistance and activism
(Tymoczko 2010). Also, the relation between the translation activity and
Gender Studies has long been the object of academic attention (Federici
et al. 2011; Nissen 2002; Von Flotow 2011). All these perspectives are
particularly relevant when the translator is dealing with alternative texts
because special attention must be paid to “the values, beliefs, and rep-
resentations that constitute those differences and of which translation
itself is the vehicle and support” (Venuti 2017, p. 2). However, this
M. A. Barros del Río (*) 

University of Burgos, Burgos, Spain
E. Alcalde Peñalver 
University of Alcalá, Alcalá de Henares, Spain
146
M. A. Barros del Río and E. Alcalde Peñalver
coalition of them all rarely constitutes the object of study nor is it used
in the translation classroom. Particularly in the Higher Education sector,
we find that it is of the utmost importance to train prospective transla-
tors with a gender perspective.
In the Spanish context, gender issues are considered relevant, as
stated in Article 25 of the 2007 Law for Effective Equality between
Women and Men (authors’ translation for Ley Orgánica 3/2007 de
22 de marzo ). Yet, in 2017 no Spanish university offered a Bachelor’s
degree in Gender or Women’s Studies (Bernárdez Rodal 2017) and
the topic is frequently addressed in the form of cross curricular con-
tent (Asián Chaves et al. 2015). As university lecturers, we feel urged
to consciously include the gender perspective in our translation course.
For this purpose, appropriate texts where traditional gender configura-
tions and social meanings of sexual differences are altered may be very
useful, since they show distinctiveness in the use of language (Orme
2010), characters (Martin 2010) and symbols (Cutolo 2012). We agree
with Simon (1996, p. 8) in that “both feminism and translation […]
are tools for a critical understanding of difference as it is represented in
language.” Indeed, the relation between gender and translation has led
to many questions about linguistic and social stereotypes to the point
that it “can be seen as a discursive construction which, through transla-
tion practice, moulds and transforms gender identities and stresses the
notion of difference” (Federici et al. 2011, p. 10).
In light of these considerations, the aim of our study was to raise
awareness among third-year students of a Spanish Language and
Literature Degree of the ideological transfer implied in translation activ-
ity. These students had never studied translation before but they had a
B1–B2 level of English. Through the detection of different translation
problems and difficulties in particular, we expected not only to raise
awareness of gender issues among our students but also to foster a criti-
cal perception of the translation activity and the translator as a cultural
mediator (Bedeker and Feinauer 2006; Katan 2016; Nida 1998) and
an active agent (Tymoczko 2010). All of this could only be achieved
through an adequate educational intervention that went beyond the
text as an object to translate, in order to explore the nature of the alter-
native text, its contextualization, the values embedded within it and
9 Ideological Transfer in the Translation Activity …
147
its transgressive nature. For these purposes, a three-phase methodology

was designed that included a pre-test on attitudes towards the roles of
women in society, the identification of translation problems from a gen-
der perspective and application of strategies according to different cate-
gories, and a final survey to assess the ideological transfer performed.
2 Literature and Translation in the EFL

Classroom
It is undeniable that the use of literature in the classroom offers many
advantages. From a linguistic perspective, it enhances reading practice,
pragmatic, vocabulary and grammar knowledge (Khatib et al. 2011),
as well as self-confidence (Albaladejo 2007). From a subjective perspec-
tive, it is motivating and a vehicle to explore personal feelings (Vandrick
1996). Moreover, it also enhances emotional intelligence and critical
thinking (Bean 2011). Culturally, it is where beliefs, knowledge and
attitudes are most likely to become apparent (Andone 2002). Among
all literary forms, many scholars (Erkaya 2005; Oster 1989; Schoffer
1990) have highlighted the utility of short stories for developing critical
thinking in the EFL classroom thanks to their manageable length and
structure. In addition, the cultural values they embed can be more easily
detected and discussed, and their limited point of view can be shifted
and overcome, promoting critical thinking. Naturally, the selected piece
of literature should meet all these requirements, which seem to be of
particular interest for the translation classroom with a gender perspec-
tive. As feminist scholar Nina Lykke has affirmed “to define objects of
research is never an innocent activity” (2010, p. 32). Thus, our choice
had to be made with care because “translation makes deliberate choices
about which writer to translate, which foreign ideas and materials to
disseminate” (Von Flotow 2011, p 4).
Luckily, as a consequence of second-wave feminism, during the last
decades of the twentieth century, adaptations of folk and fairy tales
proliferated. Fairy tales place their origin in oral tradition and usu-
ally refer to cultural conceptions that shape perceptions of the self and
148
consolidate collective imagery. Consequently, they are embedded with

power relations that are implicitly or explicitly transmitted. Authors
such as Angela Carter, Jeanette Winterson, James Finn Garner, Roald
Dahl, Gail Carson Levine, and Emma Donoghue, to name a few,
challenged tradition both in form and content and invited readers to
reconsider the traditional texts (Joosen 2011, p. 16) offering alternative
possibilities for “dominant ideas of femininity and women’s proper role”
(Wolff 1990, p. 61). This literary outburst, fuelled by feminist (Gilbert
and Gubar 1980; Haase 2004; Joosen 2011) and postmodern (McHale
and Platt 2016) criticism, demonstrated the ability to produce new
fictional texts that challenged tradition, subverted the canon and re-
created new interpretations.
In particular, Irish writer Emma Donoghue is a creative playwright,
literary historian, novelist and screenwriter whose fiction, while usually
conventional in structure, tends to interrogate “the received narratives
of the dominant culture” (Smyth 1997, p. 22). This is particularly visi-
ble in her first story collection Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins
(1997), a re-writing of twelve classic tales from Perrault, the Brothers
Grimm and Andersen where traditional gender configurations and
social meanings of sexual differences are altered through a distinctive
use of language (Orme 2010), characters (Martin 2010) and symbols
(Cutolo 2012). In the absence of a Spanish translation, this short-story
collection seemed very adequate to expose the students to narratives
that destabilize traditional cultural roles and sex identification. While
traditional fairy tales are based in oral tradition and folklore and usually
refer to cultural conceptions and norms that consolidate socialization
patterns (Parsons 2004), Donoghue’s re-creations go against biologi-
cal determinism and cultural essentialism because they dare to project
alternative plots for socially accepted patterns (Cart 1997; Dutheil
de la Rochère 2009; Orme 2010; Moloney and Thompson 2003). In
this volume, the author expresses the diversity of women’s experiences
through stories that would not only alter traditional cultural constructs
but also open new horizons among our students’ habits as readers and
translators.
All this considered, we foresaw that the translation task could mir-
ror these challenges since students would need to pay special attention
149
to those values, beliefs and representations that according to Venuti

(2017, p. 2) constitute the differences that a translation needs to por-
tray. Moreover, as lecturers, we believe that education is a political act,
and Venuti’s statement is consistent with the principles of critical ped-
agogy, a perspective that when allied with feminist pedagogy enhances
reflection and reaction to asymmetrical power relations in all disciplines,
as well as when teaching a foreign language (Barros-del Rio 2016).
Naturally, this could only be effective if our pedagogy were student-
oriented as opposed to the traditional or “banking model of education”
that Paulo Freire rejected (1970, p. 58). A pedagogy focused on the stu-
dents would allow them to challenge the selected texts and become crit-
ical readers and engaged producers in their translation practice (Berga
2001).
3 Implementation: Transformation Through

Translation
A critical aspect to consider for our study was the classroom compo-
sition. The selected group consisted of 18 people, ten female and
eight male students; and six different nationalities, namely three from
Romania, one from Japan, one from Turkey, two from Italy, one from
Germany and ten from Spain. This group of students was enrolled in
the optional module “Strategies for translation in the English lan-
guage” that was taught in the fourth year of the Bachelor’s programme
of Spanish Studies at the University of Burgos (Spain). This meant that
almost half of the students did not have Spanish as a mother tongue
and would have to learn the strategies to translate English texts into
Spanish. For this reason, we decided to work in groups that included
at least one Spanish native speaker. Regarding their translation expe-
rience, none of them had taken a translation course before, but two
students had carried out some crowd translation as a hobby. Another
issue was the multilingual and multicultural nature of the classroom,
which would undoubtedly be biased by a wide range of cultural values
and perspectives. However, far from being a problem, this constituted
150
an unexpected richness that needed to be enhanced and utilized for

higher purposes. For these reasons, we agreed that a selection of the most
popular fairy tales could establish a common ground for the different
nationalities we were working with. After all, these short story forms are
part of a traditional canon because they are universal (Duff and Maley
1991; Zipes 2012), they deal with topics familiar to the students, and
are subject to a friendly reception. The selected stories were: “The Tale of
the Apple”, “The Tale of the Hair”, “The Tale of the Needle”, “The Tale
of the Rose” and “The Tale of the Spinster”, which were based on the
stories of Snow White, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, the Beauty and the
Beast and Rumpelstiltskin, respectively. The following sections explain
the three-phase methodology designed for the translation classroom.
3.1 First Phase: Raising Awareness
In order to assess students’ awareness in terms of gender, they were

asked to individually answer a pre-test on their attitudes toward the
roles of women in society. Known as the Attitude Toward Women Scale
(AWS), and designed by Spence and Helmreich (1978),1 this 15-item
test examines routines and daily life from a gender perspective, a mat-
ter that the Irish author pays much attention to in her writings, as she
has admitted: “I’m always aware of gender, even when I’m writing about
men; it shapes how everyone experiences daily life. A lot of my writing
has been about women struggling – in different contexts – to be them-
selves in a hostile world” (Donoghue 2017). Once completed and eval-
uated, tailored written materials on key concepts such as gender, sex,
empowerment, feminism, gender bias and violence, among others, were
distributed and discussed to ensure a preliminary awareness of gender
bias in daily life.
For text contextualization, a second round of materials about litera-
ture and how gender awareness has been increasingly present in literary
works in the English language was also passed around and commented
upon. This second session was focused on Irish literature and, more par-
ticularly, on Emma Donoghue and her work. Already published mate-
rials were distributed (Barros-del Rio 2005) and audiovisual resources
151
used, including the author’s official website and an interview she had
given on “Women and Gender” for TVO (Donoghue 2011). Once the
groups had been formed and the selected texts distributed, each group
was given a grid to fill in after a first reading. Its aim was to help the
students reflect on the plot and recognize its alterations with respect to
the traditional forms (see Annex 1). This critical reading would facilitate
their process of understanding the text in English and help them reflect
upon power relations and gender inequalities embedded in the selected
short stories.
From our point of view, these two sessions were essential for two
reasons. First, none of the students had had any instruction on gen-
der issues before. Second, Emma Donoghue and the literary tradition
of women writers in the English language were totally foreign to them
and as Andone (2002, p. 144) has affirmed, criticism and explanation
within the source language and culture is essential for understanding the
literary piece before proceeding with its translation. Only when the stu-
dents were familiar with the author and her activism, did we proceed
with the translation practice.
3.2 Second Phase: Translation in Progress

and Main Challenges
The second phase of our study consisted of the translation activity. The
students were divided into five groups of two or three members, always
ensuring that each group had at least one native Spanish speaker. Each
group was given a fairy tale to translate from English into Spanish.
To foster a thorough reading of the tales and to increase our students’
critical awareness towards the texts, they were required to compare the
characters, gender relationships, contexts, plot developments and final
outcomes of traditional fairy tales with Emma Donoghue’s adaptations.
As Henderson affirms, the gender pedagogy approach “involves a con-
stant movement between doing things and asking what doing those
things in those ways does to those things” (2015, p. 5).
In addition, the subsequent translation task should integrate a con-
scious analysis of the translation difficulties, which included their
152
identification as well as the application of the most appropriate strat-

egies to solve them. At this point, it is relevant to distinguish between
translation problems and translation difficulties. According to Nord
(1991, p. 151), a translation problem is “an objective problem which
every translator (irrespective of his level of competence and the techni-
cal conditions of their work)” has to solve during a particular transla-
tion task, whereas translation difficulties would be “subjective and have
to do with the translator himself and his specific working conditions.”
For our purpose, both aspects of the translation activity were substantial
and worth analyzing and we created a grid where they could be detected
and annotated during the translation process (see Annex 2).
3.2.1 Translation Problems
To facilitate the work of the groups, we decided to follow

Hurtado Albir’s classification of translation problems (2001) because it
includes elements essential in the translation process—that is, language,
characters and symbols. In particular, we organized the translation prob-
lems into four main categories. First of all, students were asked to iden-
tify linguistic problems. These problems were related to the differences
between the two languages with regard to terminology, morphosyntax,
style and textual elements (cohesion, coherence, thematic progression,
textual typologies and intertextuality). The particular language use
in these short stories was also included in this category. In this case,
Donoghue modifies and adapts the language of the traditional short sto-
ries to suit new communicative purposes. Thus, the students needed to
render these nuances into Spanish. Extralinguistic problems represented
the second category. These problems are related to cultural issues or lack
of knowledge of the subject-matter area in which the text is framed. The
characters and symbols of the story must be analyzed according to this
category since they are framed within the specific cultural context that
the author portrays. Instrumental problems represented the third cat-
egory. These problems were related to difficulties in the research pro-
cess that translators complete before starting to translate, mainly due to
a lack of resources on a specific issue. These problems must be part of
153
the students’ working methodology since they would have to consult

many different sources to finally decide which translation solution best
fits into their text in Spanish. Finally, pragmatic problems are related to
the speech acts present in the original text, the intentionality and pre-
suppositions of the author, as well as those derived from the translation
commission, the characteristics of the target readers and the context in
which the translation takes place. Characters and symbols are also part
of this category because of the many nuances that lie behind the words
and expressions that they use, as well as the author’s narrative.
3.2.2 Translation Strategies
Once students had classified the translation problems they had found,
they were required to solve them according to Hurtado Albir’s categori-
zation of translation strategies. Students also had to justify their decision.
The translation strategies that they were exposed to were the following:
– Adaptation: A specific cultural element of the source culture is

replaced with one from the target culture.
– Amplification: Details that are not formulated in the original text are
added to the translation such as extra linguistic information, transla-
tor notes, etc.
– Compensation: An item of information or stylistic effect is inserted
elsewhere in the translated text because it could not be reflected in
the same place as it appears in the original text.
– Linguistic concentration: Linguistic elements are synthesized.
– Description. A term or expression is replaced by the description of its
form or function.
– Elision: Elements of information present in the original text are not
translated. It is the opposite of amplification.
– Generalization. A more general or neutral term is used.
– Particularization: A more precise or concrete term is used. It the
opposite of generalization.
– Modulation: A change of point of view, focus or category of thought
is made in relation to the formulation of the original text. It can be
both lexical and structural.
154
– Literal translation: The translation is conducted word by word.

– Transposition: The grammar category is changed.
We considered that the use of all these strategies allowed students

to convey in Spanish the essential features of the written style of the
author, which included a distinctive use of language (Orme 2010), the
particular representation of characters (Martin 2010) and the presence
of symbols (Cutolo 2012).
3.3 Third Phase: Self-Assessment and Critical

Reflection
The last step in our educational intervention was targeted at evaluat-

ing the degree of ideological transfer perceived by the students during
the two previous phases. For this purpose, a ten-item test was designed
focusing on two main fields, namely the usefulness of prior contextu-
alization both on gender issues and the selected author, and the role of
the translator in the translation activity. The nature of this research took
the form of a qualitative survey (see Annex 3). Results and implications
are discussed hereafter.
4 Analysis and Discussion
Despite the absence of a Higher Education policy for the advancement
of Gender Studies in the Spanish academia, item analysis of the AWS
test yielded 14 responses with a result of 3.7 average out of 5. This
high result may be attributed to a positive attitude among the students
towards women’s emancipation prior to our intervention. This first
phase was completed with a subsequent debate on the topic, and an
introductory session on women writers in English (Emma Donoghue,
in particular), before undertaking the translation practice. Considering
that we worked with students of Spanish whose knowledge of the liter-
ary tradition in English was limited, these sessions were much appreci-
ated according to the results of the final survey.
155
Here we must acknowledge the usefulness of comparing traditional

and alternative texts prior to the translation process. Not only did it
focus students’ attention on the plot and the characters’ interaction, but
also on the unexpected construction of the structure and the innovative
use of the voices. This activity was key to unveiling the power and gen-
der issues inherent in traditional folk tales, to underlining the alterna-
tive nature of the selected texts, and to enhancing reflection before the
students undertook the translation practice.
In relation to the translation process, we analyzed the students’
responses to the identification of translation problems and how they
had solved them according to the categories previously explained.
To start with, regarding extralinguistic issues, students successfully
identified some of the main extralinguistic references embedded in the
texts in English. In the case of cultural, social and moral values, stu-
dents indicated that since the arguments of these stories belonged to
the popular imagination of European culture, the author transposed
elements with a new interpretative vision. For example, the group that
translated the “The Tail of the Hair” stated that “the hair” was a symbol
of the maturity of the woman and that her decision to cut it marked a
moment of transgression of the social conventions and of emancipation
as an independent woman. This entailed looking beyond the simple
meaning of a term in a text and analyzing it from the author’s perspec-
tive. They also pointed out that the horn, wind, wolves and hunting
were negative symbols that the author used to speak of masculinity and
oppressive patriarchal domination. In the group working with “The
Tail of the Spinster,” students noted that the rose was a metaphor of
family unity and love. These were perspectives they had not considered
when they first read the stories without analyzing the meaning that was
implied beyond the written words.
Regarding the use of symbols and characters, in “The Tail of the
Spinster,” students were surprised to find that the beast was a woman,
contrary to the traditional tale. In the case of “The Tail of the Apple,”
students noted that the author used different illustrative expressions to
refer to the term “menstruation” such as “the day there was a patch of
red on my crumpled sheet.” Once they had grasped the meaning, they
had no difficulty in conveying it in Spanish. Another problem they
156
found in “The Tale of the Needle” was the use of the word “spinster”
for the character, which means both a woman whose occupation is spin-
ning and a woman who has remained unmarried. There was not a word
in Spanish with the same double meaning and thus they decided to use
“hilandera,” which only reflects the professional meaning.
When it came to the distinctive use of language, some of the prob-
lems students encountered were pragmatic as well as linguistic. For
example, in the case of “The Tail of the Spinster,” students reported that
there were some instances in which the author expressed movement
with some gender connotations, such as in the following examples: “red
rose just opening” (which they translated as una rosa que empezaba a
difundir su esplendor—a rose that began to spread its splendour—thus
using an amplification technique), or “doggish submission” (translated
as sumisión perruna, thus opting for a literal translation). Students also
noted that with the use of the first person of the main character as a
grammar feature, the author gives more power to women and breaks
the stereotype of traditional tales, in which female characters have no
relevance per se. In the case of “The Tail of the Hair,” students also
noted that the author portrays a new way to look at reality. This is illus-
trated in the sentence, “We lay there, waiting to see what we would see”
(translated with the use of an amplification technique as Permanecimos
en la misma posición, esperando a ver lo que nos depararía el mundo,
which in English would be literally translated as “We remained in the
same position, waiting to see what the world would bring us”). Other
expressions in this tale with gender connotations that students identi-
fied and that they translated with an amplification technique were the
following: “The smell of sheep’s wool on her back” (el olor de la lana
de oveja en sus ropas ) which in English would literally mean “the smell
of sheep’s wool in their clothes” or “You are helpless as a lamb still wet
from the ewe” (estás tan necesitada como el cordero que sigue mojado tras el
parto, literally translated in English as “you are as needy as the lamb that
is still wet after childbirth”).
Interestingly, Donoghue does not separate characters’ dialogue inter-
ventions from the rest of the narrative, which also caused a reaction
of surprise among the students. Once the students identified that this
was a way to portray the characters’ boldness and lack of fear to express
157
their feelings, they used the same style in Spanish to convey the author’s
intention. Nevertheless, two groups used a more common technique for
dialogues in Spanish, opting for the inverted commas and colon, as in
the following example of “The Tale of the Rose”: “I whispered, Which
of us would not sell all we had to stay alive” (Suspiré: “Quién de nosotros
no vendería todo lo que posse por mantenerse con vida” ). On the contrary,
the rest of the groups decided to follow Donoghue’s style and included
dialogues as part of the indirect style of the text.
Finally, regarding instrumental problems, the students turned to
different monolingual and bilingual dictionaries such as Collins and
Oxford, but in some cases it was not until they had reread the story a
few times that they were able to grasp the author’s connotations behind
the words she had used. They also resorted to databases such as Linguee
or specific websites to find images and explanations for some terms, as
in the case of the word “coronets” in “The Tale of the Apple.”
Overall, the translations showed that the students were fully aware
of the notions behind the words they were translating and they strove
to transmit the same values the author had included in her writing. We
believe that the previous contextualization of the author and the book,
the gender-based pedagogy implemented and the pre-analysis of the
translation problems used in the first sessions allowed them to adopt
a gender lens towards translation and identify the references that the
author conveyed in the original text.
The outcome of the final qualitative survey (Annex 3) on gender
awareness and critical translation practice confirmed these conclusions.
The items related with acknowledging gender awareness (1, 2 and 6)
scored 3.1. In particular, item 2, which related the translator’s gender
awareness with the text was favourably scored with 3.2. This suggested
a positive effect of the introductory sessions on gender and women’s lit-
erature. However, the items related to the critical and mediating role of
the translator in the translation practice (5, 7 and 9) scored 2.8. This
poor rating was particularly significant for item 5, which only reached
2.1. This statement related a good translation practice with impar-
tiality and precision on the part of the translator. Thus, the results
indicated that the students still supported the invisibility of the trans-
lator in the translating practice and tended to decline their right to
158
be active participants in the production of the new text (Tymoczko

2010) and take a stand (Berga 2001).
5 Conclusions
Through the monitored process of translation presented here, our stu-
dents realized that translators are indeed the professionals in charge of
the delivery, in a target language, of work written in a source language,
and thus have a responsibility in terms of the way their writing will be
read by a potential audience.
The three-phase methodology used in our study allowed the students
to identify problems according to the different categories they had been
shown and to apply different strategies to solve them and transmit the
meaning and connotations of the original text. This gave way to a suc-
cessful transposition into Spanish of the characters, symbols and the dis-
tinctive use of language that are characteristic of Donoghue’s fairy tales.
The resulting translations were embedded with a gender perspective,
and the scores of the final survey indicated that our introductory ses-
sions had served to reinforce the students’ gender awareness.
Our educational intervention, which was student-oriented, also suc-
ceeded in fostering a critical and reflective translation process, according
to survey. However, the majority of our students identified impartiality
and precision with high-quality translation. This meant that their per-
ception of their role as translators did not evolve towards activism and
engagement as desired, despite the care we took in the design of our
teaching scheme.
As translation trainers, we believe that the act of translating should
be vindicated as a cultural mediating process where ideology and iden-
tity are key elements. Under this perspective, the translation from the
original text to the target text needs to be enriched by including other
meaningful elements—that is, both the author and the target read-
ers’ cultural frameworks, the intention underlying the selected text,
and the role of the translator. In order to empower prospective trans-
lators with a gender lens, it is necessary to insist on translation as an
159
active and productive activity rather than a reproductive and invisible

task (Andone 2002; Hatim 2014). For this, university training should
incorporate the use of alternative texts more frequently so that the stu-
dents are challenged and eventually feel the need to take a stand. The
analysis of translated texts with a gender lens could also set an exam-
ple of how other translators have undertaken this task. Finally, reflec-
tion and exchange of feelings, ideas and strategies put into play during
the translation practice should also take a more relevant part in the pro-
cess because the translator’s engagement in the negotiation of meaning
between the producer and the reader should not be overlooked.
All in all, these results show that the methodology used helped the
students in this study develop a critical and reflective translation process
with a gender lens. An increasingly integrated approach in the training
of prospective translators is a most needed and urgent task.
Note
1. The Likert scales are useful to measure attitudes. In the given test, for
every given question or statement, the range of responses varied from
4 = Strongly agree, to 1= Strongly disagree. This method was also
applied to the final survey. For a more detailed explanation on its use, see
Jamieson (2004).
Annex 1
Explain in short sentences the form and structure of the traditional tale:
Female protagonist’s personality

Male character’s personality
Secondary character’s personality
Gender relationships
Social context/structure
Steps in the plot
Final outcome
160
Then, explain in short sentences the form and structure of Emma

Donoghue’s rewriting:
Female protagonist’s personality

Male character’s personality
Secondary character’s personality
Gender relationships
Social context/structure
Steps in the plot
Final outcome
Annex 2
After reading the tale carefully, take some time to think about it, review
the text and try to detect the following aspects in the text before and
after you translate it:
Categories Examples
Extralinguistic issues (cultural, moral
and social values transmitted in the
tale, symbols, etc.)
Distinctive use of characters (gender,
age, looks, personality, attitudes,
reactions)
Distinctive use of language (cohesion,
coherence, thematic progression, tex-
tual typologies and intertextuality)
Instrumental problems (other resources
of information, dictionaries, glossa-
ries, parallel texts, data bases, etc.)
Linguistic problems (terminology,
style, cohesion, coherence, thematic
progression, textual typologies and
intertextuality)
Pragmatic problems (speech acts, inten-
tionality and presuppositions of the
author)
Other remarks
161
Annex 3
– The introductory class on gender made me reflect and/or deepen my
knowledge on some aspects that I had not previously thought of.
A B C D
Totally agree Somewhat agree Somewhat disagree Totally disagree
– After the introductory class on gender, my sensibility towards the text

to be translated has increased.
A B C D
– Contextualizing the author and her work before translating the text
facilitates the translation process.
A B C D
– The intention of the author when writing the text must be consid-
ered when translating it.
A B C D
– A good translation must be impartial and accurate, regardless of the

author’s subjectivity.
A B C D
– I have translated the selected text with a gender perspective.

A B C D
162
– The story contains politically incorrect elements that I did not trans-
late literally, but I have neutralized their meaning.
A B C D
– My translation into Spanish conveys the author’s intention in the

source language.
A B C D
– In my translation I have adapted some elements of the source text to

the Spanish context.
A B C D
– After completing the translation of this story, my general perception

of traditional stories has changed.
A B C D
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10
Integrating Gender Perspective
in Interpreter Training: A Fundamental
Requirement in Contexts of Gender
Violence
Carmen Toledano Buendía
1 Introduction
Since the United Nations (UN) Declaration on the Elimination of
Violence against Women, approved on 20 December 1993 by the
General Assembly, the term “violence against women” is used to refer to:
any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in,
physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including
threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether
occurring in public or in private life.
Gender violence is the extreme manifestation of the inequality and sub-

jugation endured by women the world over and represents a clear vio-
lation of human rights. Its origins lie in a patriarchal culture that has
perpetuated patterns of domination based on the supposed superiority
C. Toledano Buendía (*) 
Department of English and German Philology, University of La Laguna,
San Cristóbal de La Laguna - Tenerife, Spain
168
C. Toledano Buendía
of men and the discrimination of women, which are justified by stereo-

types or myths deeply rooted in society.
Gender violence is a universal problem. Around 20% of the female
population is estimated to suffer violence of some kind. In Europe
alone, the report Violence Against women: An EU-Wide Survey (2014)
reveals that 13 million women experienced physical violence in the
12 months prior to the report, a figure equivalent to 7% of women aged
between 18 and 74 years. Of women who are currently or have been in
a relationship with a man, 22% have experienced physical and/or sexual
violence.
Thanks to gradual progress in matters of social justice, many coun-
tries have introduced a set of measures, services and benefits for the
prevention, assistance, protection and recovery of female victims of
gender violence. However, for many immigrant women who endure all
kinds of violence simply because of their gender, these resources may
be restricted or even inaccessible because of limited knowledge or igno-
rance of the official language/s of the community in which they live.
The particular overrepresentation of women from this collective in gen-
der violence settings has been reported in various studies (Menjivar and
Salcido 2002; Runner et al. 2009; Amnesty International 2007; Arnoso
et al. 2012; Donoso and Venceslao 2013). In Spain, for example, 34.7%
of deaths resulting from domestic abuse in 2017 were immigrant
women. This percentage highlights the overrepresentation of this group
who account for just 9.5% of the female population of Spain.
Their administrative situation, family and social maladjustment, cul-
tural values, ignorance of their rights and of existing services are some
of the factors that hinder their chances of reporting the situation of
violence in which they find themselves and, consequently, of escaping
from it (see, for instance, Menjivar and Salcido 2002; Chocrón Giráldez
2011). Moreover, in many cases, linguistic barriers are for many immi-
grant women an additional obstacle that exacerbates their situation and
their feelings of defencelessness and isolation, often becoming an insu-
perable impediment to their confronting, and fighting against, their sit-
uation of abuse. In these cases, linguistic assistance is vital, not only to
provide immigrant women with these services, but also to ensure effec-
tive attention from all the professionals involved. As Huelgo et al. point
10 Integrating Gender Perspective in Interpreter Training …
169
out, “language access plays a central role in the ability of survivors to

progress in their journeys to safety” (2006, p. 5).
Among these measures, the presence of professional interpreters at
every stage of the process of attention and intervention plays a key role.
Interpreters facilitate faithful and objective communication between
interlocutors, so that victims can report their situation precisely and cor-
rectly, and can in turn be informed of their rights and obligations. Only
if linguistic mediation is provided by professionals can immigrant victims
of abuse feel supported in the same conditions as the rest of the popula-
tion, and can the effective provision of this service be guaranteed, leading
to the empowerment of women, a way out of the violent situation and
the road to recovery (Lemon 2006; Toledano and Del Pozo 2015).
The need for public service interpreter preparation and specializa-
tion has been shown through various projects and studies, which have
led to the development of resources, recommendations and training.1
Particularly noteworthy in Spain is the European project Speak Out for
Support (SOS-VICS), the objective of which was to contribute to inter-
preter training and specialization in contexts of gender violence.2 In this
chapter, we will attempt to justify the relevance of training for these pro-
fessionals, placing special emphasis on the inclusion of gender perspective
as a key skill for their capacity to interpret for female victims of gender
violence and to ensure impartial, respectful and professional interpreta-
tion. Throughout this chapter, we will use some of the results and testimo-
nies gathered in the research carried out as part of the SOS-VICS project.3
2 Reasons for Interpreter Specialization

in Gender Perspective
At the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, the UN
defined violence against women as:
[…] a manifestation of the historically unequal power relations between

men and women, which have led to domination over and discrimination
against women by men and to the prevention of women’s full advance-
ment. (UN 1996, p. 49)
170
The acquisition of gender awareness entails understanding violence

as a consequence of sociocultural factors that affect male and female
genders. By its very definition, this acquisition is considered an indis-
pensable requirement for all the professionals who participate in assist-
ing and protecting victims of this kind of violence. Every facet of this
exercise in assistance necessitates not only understanding that violence
against women does not derive from more or less irrational isolated or
circumstantial personal reactions, but from a patriarchal regime and a
sociocultural articulation of gender. But it also needs to militate against
this status quo.
2.1 Some Political Considerations
For the past 50 years, many legal orders have protected women’s rights
to a violence-free life, urging governments to adopt the necessary meas-
ures to guarantee women’s rights in accordance with the principle of
non-discrimination, to develop policies and plans that help implement
these rights, and to provide redress and reparation to those whose rights
have been violated. Some examples include the Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW),
approved in 1979 by the UN; the acclaimed Fourth World Conference
on Women held in Beijing in 1995; and on a more recent European
level, the Istanbul Convention (Council of Europe Convention on
Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic
Violence), signed in 2011, and Directive 2012/29/EU of the European
Parliament and the Council of 25 October 2012.
These documents pinpoint the special attention that must be paid
to the specific needs of certain groups, which, for various reasons, such
as age, religion or origin, may find themselves in a situation of greater
vulnerability. This is the case for immigrant women who either do not
speak the language of the community in which they live or they have a
very limited knowledge of it. This is explicitly acknowledged, for exam-
ple, in articles 3 (the right to understand and be understood) and 7 (the
right to interpretation and translation) of the aforementioned directive,
which contemplate the need for a free interpreting service in order to
ensure effective communication.
171
Moreover, the specialization and training in gender perspective of the

agents involved in assisting gender violence victims is considered to be
a key factor. The CEDAW, for example, commits States to contribute
to eliminating the substrate of discrimination, that is the prejudices and
discriminating stereotypes on the roles and attitudes of men and women
(Naredo 2015, p. 41). And both article 61 of Directive 2012/29/EU of
the European Parliament and the Council, and 1/2004 of the Istanbul
Convention point to the need to promote specialization for the groups
of professionals who intervene in the process of informing, assisting and
protecting victims (Hertog 2015)‚4 including interpreters.
In the case of immigrant women who cannot speak the language, inter-
preters must provide the same guarantees as the other links in the chain:
professional competence and no preconceptions. The performance of
these interpreters may, or may not, be the key that opens the door to the
effective exercise of the rights of some immigrant women. [Translated
from Spanish] (Naredo 2015, p. 43)5
2.2 Technical Reasons for Applying

a Gender Perspective
The political obligations or recommendations resulting from these doc-

uments are endorsed for technical reasons. The highly complex phe-
nomenon of gender violence and the multiple needs raised by victims
demand comprehensive attention, and the specialization of both the
services and assistance resources, and the agents and operators who pro-
vide them. The team of professionals who assist victims must be aware
of existing resources, legislation and measures available to women; they
must act in a coordinated manner, following specific protocols in each
area and from a gender perspective, in order to ensure efficient attention
and to avoid the double victimization of women. Yet the efficiency of
these resources in assisting women gender violence victims who do not
speak or have a limited knowledge of the language of the community in
which they live also entails overcoming the linguistic barrier in order to
ensure correct communication between the parties, an aspect that is all
too frequently overlooked (Lemon 2006; Vieria Morante 2015).
172
The testimonies of the 12 survivors of gender violence interviewed in

the SOS-VICS project reveal that ignorance of the language was as much
an obstacle to understanding their rights and existing resources, as to
explaining and expressing their situation of violence, and to understand-
ing the process and consequences of it. As for the service providers, the
professionals interviewed for the project cited the factors that hindered
their work as follows: victims’ ignorance of resources (47.1% important
and 29% very important), distrust of the services (45.4% important and
27.8% very important), cultural barriers (45.2% important and 22.5%
very important) and linguistic barriers (37.2% important and 32.1%
very important). In all cases, the percentage of professionals interviewed
who considered that the effectiveness of their work is in some way
threatened by communicative problems was in excess of two thirds (Del
Pozo et al. 2014a, p. 35). However, despite this professional’s view, this
project research reveals the absence, improvisation and lack of profes-
sionalism of the resources for linguistic assistance in Spain, even in areas
where the law requires the presence of interpreters at all stages of crim-
inal proceedings (Del Pozo and Toledano 2016; Vieria Morante 2015,
p. 52). Consequently, as Lemon argues when referring to the USA, “the
states or counties which do not provide this service are in fact denying
victims of domestic violence access to the courts” (2006, p. 38).6
Evidently, if the lack of a communicative mediation service can be
off-putting for defenceless victims, it is important to understand that
improvising solutions to cover this deficiency can be even more serious. As
one of the professionals interviewed in the SOS-VICS project, remarked:
I never worked with professional interpreters, just with persons close to

victims. I have attended alleged foreign victims (Romanian, Moroccan)
who did not make a complaint and it was impossible to talk to them
about the matter since they were accompanied by the possible aggres-
sor to the medical consultation. (Comment number 4 in Del Pozo et al.
2014a, p. 91)
The presence of family members—even children—friends, volunteers

or untrained interpreters is the norm in many services and countries
such Spain. Various research studies that analyze services rendered by
173
untrained interpreters reveal deficiencies, hindrances and even failure

to access public services on an equal basis, resulting in inadequate use
of the institutional resources available to citizens (Abraham and Fiola
2006; Bischoff 2003; Bowen 2010; Cambridge 1999; Flores et al. 2003;
Kelly and Bancroft 2007; Sánchez-Reyes and Martín 2005).
Issues such as lack of accuracy, editing of information, stance or lack
of anonymity are common features of the interpreting carried out by
untrained interpreters. In the case of gender violence, these features can
bring fatal consequences. In terms of message accuracy, for example,
Polzin argues that if it should be the norm in all interpreting processes,
it is vital in the field of gender-based violence.
In order to get help, victims usually have to describe their experiences and
share very intimate information when filling a report or during an initial
intake meeting. This usually includes details about the physical or sexual
assault that may feel shameful to discuss –even though the abuse is not
the victim’s fault- especially in front of a male interpreter. These details
have important implications for a court case, and could affect the other
types of services to which the victim is entitled. For example, substitut-
ing the word chest for breast in describing the assault, even if motivated
by respect for the victim’s modesty, conveys a very different meaning and
could lead to a much different outcome. (2007, p. 23)
Likewise, untrained interpreters tend to summarize, edit interlocutors’

interventions and enter into parallel conversations with the other parties
(Knapp-Potthoff and Knapp 1987). This leads to the manipulation or
alteration of the speakers’ words, which is usually associated with the
interpreter exceeding his/her role (Wandesjö 1998), thereby impeding
the adoption of objective and neutral positions. This circumstance poses
serious technical difficulties for intervention according to some of the
agents in the surveys:
In most cases there were conversations with victims that went beyond
the professional interview, which is unacceptable and this at times ham-
pered the intervention. In most cases, they were from immigrant commu-
nities with unknown languages (African dialects, etc.) and we contacted
174
interpreters from such linguistic communities and the interpreters hap-

pened to know the victim within her social environment, which is some-
thing I consider damaging to the intervention […]. (Comment number
67 in Del Pozo et al. 2014a, p. 93)
For mediation in contexts of gender violence and child abuse, Huelgo

et al. (2006, p. 6) pinpoint the crucial need for interpreters to be aware
of the ethical and legal implications and demands of their work, and
emphasize the importance of the neutrality of the intervention, confi-
dentiality and absence of conflicts of interest that might interfere in the
impartiality of the service provided.
It is vital to understand that the real profile of the phenomenon of
gender violence demands not only that the resources used to combat
it are complemented by linguistic assistance, but that this assistance is
in itself a crossover resource that enables everything else to function.
Furthermore, it is vital to understand that the services (legal, health,
psychological, educational and care) provided to victims are not only
essential but must, in one way or another, fully identify with communi-
cation. Not that there is any content to be communicated; the content
itself forms the basis of this communication. Over and above the type of
assistance offered to victims, dealing with the problem in more than just
palliative terms requires a fundamentally communicative endeavour that
can break down cultural barriers linked to the ontological conception of
the world and human relations. These cultural barriers are increasingly
accompanied by linguistic barriers that only reflect the surface of the
problem.
In interventions with immigrant women, half the professionals
interviewed consider that it is very important (23.9%) or important
(23.2%) for interpreters to have received specific training in this area.
Professionals from the legal and care sectors placed the most importance
on this aspect (38.5% very important and 24.8% important) (Del Pozo
et al. 2014a, p. 73).
This opinion appears to be shared by interpreters, as evidenced
in the results of the Delphi survey undertaken as part of this project.
Interpreters consider the lack and difficulties of accessing specialist
training as an obstacle or hindrance to their work with gender violence
175
victims (Del Pozo et al. 2014b, p. 19). Such training should encom-
pass the mastery of various interpreting techniques, familiarity with and
applicability of a professional or ethical code of conduct, knowledge of
the fields of intervention and resources for coping with emotions and
stress, and gender training (Abraham and Oda 2000; Toledano and Del
Pozo 2015). Within the latter field, the interpreters participating in the
Delphi survey agree on various topics as relevant to their specialization.
Items relating to gender violence are mentioned, such as manifestations
of violence against women/gender-based violence; the concept of vio-
lence against women/gender violence or the cycle of violence received a
high level of consensus. Other items relating to gender equality such as
the sex/gender system; the private, public and domestic space; the main-
streaming of the gender perspective; and stereotypes and gender roles or
the gender perspective received a moderate level of consensus (Del Pozo
et al. 2014b, p. 15).
2.3 Ethical Reasons. Technical Neutrality vs.

Moral Neutrality
Inclusion of gender perspective in training professionals and interpret-

ers is not merely a political and technical obligation, but also a moral
one. Gender violence, by nature, does not simply derive from the effec-
tive and specific exploitation of unequal power between individuals; it
derives from the stable cultural representation of a hierarchical relation-
ship between genders.
The work of the interpreter is a vital tool for guaranteeing the rights
of persons who most need them. However, we must not think of it
solely as a tool for reinstating victims’ rights, but as a vital resource
for reverting their condition through empowerment. In order for this
empowerment to be effective, the communication task cannot be mis-
taken for a simple, objective translation of the statements; it must be
a clear discernment of the fact that this ‘objectivity’ is based on a rep-
resentation of the corresponding reality.
Communicative mediation with gender violence victims requires
a stance both against violence and the order of things that sustains
176
violence. An order of things that can be shared culturally in a specific

community and is rooted in its language. Consequently, faced with the
almost unanimously defended neutrality stipulated in professional codes
of ethics that govern interpreters’ practice, we believe it appropriate to
distinguish, as Romero (2010) does in relation to psychosocial inter-
vention, between technical and moral neutrality. Although interpreting
demands technical neutrality, interventions with gender violence vic-
tims do not admit moral neutrality:
There can be no neutrality before a gender violence victim: it is important

to know that one person metes out violence and another suffers from it.
The technical neutrality of the therapist is not the same as moral neutrality.
Working with victims demands a moral attitude of commitment. Showing
solidarity with the victim is necessary, though this does not imply a sim-
plistic idea that she can do no wrong or be mistaken, but rather “requires
an understanding of the fundamental injustice of traumatic experience and
the need to return some sense of justice to the victim” (Herman 2004, p.
214). The professional’s clear stance against violence can contribute to this.
[Translated from Spanish] (Romero 2010, p. 193)7
For this commitment to be endorsed, it is vital that interpreters under-

stand their task not as a temporary outsourced job to provide a service
for the true service providers, and therefore as merely instrumental, but
rather as one that fulfils a core mission directly for the service of victims
and for the eradication of the state of things that places those victims in
precisely that situation.
The professional code of conduct has an ethical basis, since it is asso-
ciated with correct procedure. This procedure entails decision-making
in accordance with guidelines on what is correct or fair, based on norms
and values—not only the professional ones—that individuals have
internalized throughout their lives according to their training and expe-
riences. Acquiring the capacity to perceive, question and reflect on these
values is a fundamental phase in the training of professionals in inter-
vention in matters of gender violence (Nogueiras García 2004, p. 50). A
capacity that, far from resulting in invisibility or weakness, brings about
self-awareness.
177
It is vital to understand that the reparation pursued in the intervention

with female gender violence victims often involves internalizing—also on
the part of the victim—ontological assumptions that may sometimes be
equally traumatic. Ensuring the skills required to contribute to this com-
municative objective by making technical neutrality compatible with the
clear stance of the professional that an objective interpretation demands
(that is, implied in the communicative context and coherent with the
order of things being established) is impossible without specialized train-
ing, which, in the case of interpreters, goes way beyond a knowledge
of working languages, mastery of interpreting techniques or thematic
competence. The intervention with gender violence victims requires the
acquisition of gender perspective and gender training.
Social myths and stereotypes associated with the way women are
regarded and abused influence people’s attitudes largely because they
are firmly rooted in language. It is therefore important to learn to iden-
tify them, not for the purposes of understanding women (specific vic-
tims of violence) but rather to understand ourselves in our mission to
comprehend the representation of these women in the discourse and to
mobilize our capacity to intervene in situations of mediation that are
conflicting on levels that always extend beyond the personal sphere.
Interpreting with gender violence victims and survivors occurs in an
individual case that always has a social dimension, since “this crime is
held on cultural and social values and myths that justify/excuse male
violent behaviours against women” (Walker 1979, p. 19), and according
to Angelelli:
During the encounters which occur within the institutions, as interloc-

utors bring their own set of beliefs, attitudes, and deeply held views on
interpersonal factors, such as gender, race ethnicity, and socioeconomic
status, all of these get enacted. (2008, p. 149)
The lack of agency and invisibility as basic principles of the model of

interpreter performance can only be approached from the ingenuous-
ness of conceiving interpretation mediation as a merely instrumental
and invisible exercise. Technical neutrality can only be ensured from
involved interpretation and the exposure of communicative conflicts,
178
and the agency involved in the willingness to resolve them. A neutral-

ity that requires an attitudinal capacity on the part of the interpreter in
order to guarantee performance from a gender perspective; that is, the
very questioning of the personal stance of the interpreter.
Working in the field of violence against women requires us to become

aware, on a personal and professional level, of our own assumption of sex-
ist stereotypes and prejudices, the values, attitudes and education that we
have internalized, as well as many behaviours and expectations depending
on gender assignation and identity. [Translated from Spanish] (Nogueiras
García 2004, p. 50)8
To ignore the position of women and the gender-based factors on which

that position is based (often operant in interlocutors) when interpreting
for female gender violence victims can induce us to not only normal-
ize, justify or diminish the importance of that violence, but to lose sight
of the objectives of the work, by seeking reconciliation solutions as a
result of a personal interpretation of the conflict that will only serve to
re-victimize the woman.
Interviewee: Well, it’s true. The interpreter who was at the… when there
was a quick trial, three days after I reported my case, the interpreter
was a Moroccan boy and of course, he didn’t need to explain anything
to me because I understood perfectly, but when he said that—well!—
that I should go back to him, that I should try and sort things out, for
my children…
Sociologist: The interpreter?
Interviewee: The interpreter, the Moroccan boy. I was amazed. I was
shocked. Really! And I just stood there and I said…
(Interviewee number 8. Moroccan woman) [Interview transcript.
Translated from Spanish]9
This is just one of various examples (transcriptions of statements) in

which the interpreter infringes his commitment to technical neutral-
ity and, from a background of cultural values that normalizes violence,
encourages mediation and reconciliation—an impossible task. Yet the
179
example clearly shows that the interpreter cannot be considered a chan-

nel between a transmitter and a receiver, but rather another voice with
privileged access to certain parts that we can only theoretically regard
as interlocutory, since only in a few cases do they communicate with
each other. Correcting these surprisingly common divergences, which
can easily derail the efforts of a large team of specialists in just a cou-
ple of utterances, does not depend on linking interpreters’ ethical com-
mitments to controlling their overperformance but to the need for a
process of personal questioning and an exercise of (personal and profes-
sional) awareness.
This difficult task of giving a voice to those who have none, with-
out speaking for them, calls for gender perspective as well as learning
to recognize and manage affective reactions resulting from the encoun-
ter with the victim. These reactions are the outcome of various factors
arising from both the perception of the episode and the generic rep-
resentation of abused women, and the order of things in which the
abuse takes place. Localized, prejudiced reactions that we cannot pre-
vent from affecting us when empathizing, communicating and inter-
preting (Millán 2004, pp. 155–157). Objectivity can only derive from
the representation and visibility of (the agency of ) that subjectivity,
which has nothing to do with our personal interpretation, but rather
with the social context that determines that our performance can be
considered an interpretation. Training is not aimed at learning not to
feel but at learning to instrumentalize what is felt for the benefit of the
intervention.
The set of attitudes, feelings and thoughts experienced by therapists
in relation to patients is known in psychology as countertransferential
attitudes (Romero 2010, p. 194). Countertransference, which occurs
in the inner world of the professional when meeting an abused patient,
provokes and arouses feelings that can, according to Romero, lead to
positions ranging between blaming the victim and overidentification.
Victim blaming can be seen as a form of defence against the anxiety,
fear or shame we feel when facing the problem of the other. This feel-
ing of rejection, arising from an eventual cultural identification, often
leads us to regard victims as rentiers or recipients of secondary bene-
fits (Velázquez 2003 as cited in Romero 2010, p. 194). Another more
180
common and subtle form of rejection is lack of commitment or neutral-

ity, a distancing and lack of empathy that causes the re-victimization of
women.
Conversely, we can swing to the opposite extreme, which results in an
intense involvement that can be accentuated for interpreters when faced
with the responsibility of being the only facilitator of communication.
This attitude, which entails interpreters assuming functions that do not
correspond to them, may raise mistaken expectations in victims about
the specific possibilities of their case, thereby generating new relations
of dependency. To avoid paternalistic or condescending attitudes, which
are not exclusive to interpreters and which ultimately lock women into
a dependent role, it is vital to interpret their vulnerability as discrimina-
tion, which does not require protection but fairness, equal opportunities
and expectations (López Méndez 2007, p. 35).
Interpreters’ frequent ignorance or denial of their countertransferen-
tial attitudes underpins the position of victims in either of these two
common expressions, hindering their development and personal growth
in the process of making emancipated and autonomous decisions. In
other words, they block women’s empowerment and agency over their
own lives, which is the end target of all interventions in gender violence.
3 Conclusion
The complex process of acquiring awareness and agency that women
must negotiate in order to report the violence to which they are being
subjected is personal and unique. Organizations can facilitate or con-
tribute to this process by providing information, guidance, support,
means, accompaniment and so forth. However, the ultimate decision
to face the problem is personal and non-transferable. Taking the deci-
sion on behalf of victims always results in failure. It is therefore not a
question of speaking for victims but of giving them a voice, a subtle
moral imperative in which all expectations of technical neutrality must
be framed. Such neutrality certainly does not derive from a distanced
attitude, but entails committed involvement in a training process that
begins with the deconstruction of interpreters’ own technical capacity.
181
This responsibility, linked to self-awareness, requires the parallel

acknowledgement of interpreters’ role as key agents in the intervention
process, from their ethical stance against violence and from a gender
perspective.
Notes
1. To mention just a few examples, in Canada, a pilot project involving a
group of specialist interpreters was created to provide mediation in the
domestic violence court in Ontario and at a service about domestic vio-
lence at the Women’s College Hospital in Toronto (Abraham and Oda
2000). In the USA, we find resources such as those of the National
Center for States Courts (Access to Justice: Limited English Proficiency
(LEP) and Access to Protection Orders ), or the Department of Justice
Office on Violence Against Women (Resource Guide for Advocates &
Attorneys on Interpretation Services for Domestic Violence Victims ); also in
the USA, the training programme and resources offered by the Voice of
Love (Healing Voices: Interpreting for Survivors of Torture, War Trauma
and Sexual Violence http://www.volinterpreting.org/); in Australia mate-
rials published by the Community Relations Commission for a multi-
cultural New South Wales (Using Interpreters in Domestic Violence and
Sexual Assault Matters ) and the project “Breaking through the language
barrier: Empowering refugee and immigrant women to combat domestic
and family violence through cultural and language training”, led by Dr.
Sandra Hale, with government funding through the NSW Department
of Premier and Cabinet, Domestic and Family Violence Grant scheme.
In Ireland, the Dublin Rape Crises Center created a manual for inter-
preters in cases of gender violence, Interpreting in Situations of Sexual
Violence and Other Trauma (2008) (http://www.drcc.ie/wp-content/
uploads/2011/03/RCC_Interpreting.pdf ). See also Costa (2015),
Lemon (2006), and Wallace (2015) for the importance of interpreter
training in US Civil courts for victims of domestic violence. And finally,
practical recommendations aimed at professional interpreters and pub-
lished in the bulletins of professional associations such as Polzin (2007)
and Huelgo et al. (2006).
2. Speak Out for Support (SOS-VICS) (JUST/2011/JPEN/2912) is a
European project co-funded by the Criminal Justice Programme of the
182
European Union. All results can be accessed through the project web
site: http://cuautla.uvigo.es/sos-vics/.
3. The following research studies were performed within the SOS-VICS
project framework: a questionnaire survey of 586 agents with experience
in assisting foreign female gender violence victims (social, health, police
and court fields); a Delphi survey of 27 interpreters who had experience
in assisting foreign female gender violence victims, and semi-structured
interviews with 12 victims and 12 agents. For complete reports see Del
Pozo et al. (2014a, b). For confidentiality purposes only, project partners
have access to the transcripts of the interviews with agents and victims.
4. For an exhaustive review of this directive, see Hertog (2015). For an
overview of European and international human rights instruments that
set down the obligation of states to provide specialised interpreting to
victims of gender violence, see Naredo (2015). Specific to translation
and interpreting and the need for professionalization and specialisation
of interpreters that intervene during the criminal process is Directive
2010/64/UE of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20
October 2010 on the right to interpretation and translation in criminal
proceedings (Blasco and Del Pozo Triviño 2015).
5. En el caso de mujeres extranjeras que desconocen el idioma, es preciso
aplicar a los y las intérpretes las mismas garantías que al resto de eslab-
ones de la cadena, competencia profesional y ausencia de prejuicios. De
ello puede depender que su actuación constituya, o no, la llave que abre
la puerta al ejercicio efectivo de los derechos paro parte de las mujeres
extranjeras.
6. Lemon’s research focuses on the need for free professional interpreters in
civil domestic violence cases in the United States and the importance of
their training.
7. No existe la neutralidad ante una víctima de violencia: hay que saber que
hay quien ejerce violencia y hay quien la padece. La neutralidad técnica
del terapeuta no es lo mismo que la neutralidad moral. Trabajar con per-
sonas victimizadas exige que se tenga una actitud moral de comprom-
iso. Es necesario tomar una postura de solidaridad con la víctima, lo que
no supone una idea simplista de que ésta no pueda hacer nada malo o
equivocado sino que “exige el entendimiento de la injusticia esencial de
la experiencia traumática y la necesidad de devolver a la víctima alguna
sensación de justicia” y a esto contribuye el claro posicionamiento del
profesional contra la violencia.
183
8. Trabajar en el área de la violencia contras las mujeres nos exige tomar

conciencia, tanto a nivel personal como profesional, de nuestra propia
asunción de estereotipos y prejuicios sexistas, los valores, actitudes y edu-
cación que hemos interiorizado, muchos comportamientos y expectati-
vas en función de la asignación e identidad de género.
9. E: es que es verdad, el intérprete que estuvo en el… cuando hubo el
juicio rápido a los tres días de poner yo la denuncia, el intérprete era el
chico marroquí y claro, a mí no me tuvo que explicar nada porque lo
entendía perfectamente pero un momento que me dijera, me dijo él a
mí, que vamos! que volviera con él, que intentara arreglar las cosas, por
las niñas…
S:¿el intérprete?
E:el intérprete, el chico marroquí, me parecía increíble, me pareció super-
fuerte, ¡es verdad! y yo me quedé ahí y digo…
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11
The Future of Academia,
Gender and Queer Pedagogy:
Concluding Remarks
The interdisciplinary nature of gender-related matters demonstrates how

approaches to translation are deeply rooted in the cultural and academic
contexts in which they are developed. However, the limited scope—in
terms of provenance and language combinations—of the contributions
received demonstrates that such approaches are regrettably far from
being widely recognized. Despite a proliferation of studies dealing with
non-anglophone and non-western contexts (Kulpa et al. 2012), the
ostensible scarcity of specific insight into gender/queer translation prac-
tices in the classroom from those same contexts and the predominance
of studies focusing on English, Italian, French and Spanish may be an
M. De Marco (*) · P. Toto 
London Metropolitan University, London, UK
P. Toto
190
indicator of an imbalance in the diffusion and accessibility of queer-

positive translation practices and pedagogy as well as of queer-positive
training and scholarship, not to mention differences in the relevant
institutional, cultural, academic and social environments.
Bearing in mind that queer language or representations of non-
normative behaviours aim to disrupt the current (social, linguistic) sys-
tem by filtering experiences through a non-normative lens, it follows
that, in the contexts presented so far, engendering or queering (i.e. read-
ing and querying through a gender/queer lens) can be understood as
being a mode of inquiry to bring out linguistic, cultural and sociological
differences, to question established realities and experiences. Represented
in this volume, therefore, are courageous and commendable examples of
gender/queer pedagogy; namely:
One that refuses normal practices and practices of normalcy, one that
begins with an ethical concern for one´s own reading practices, one that
is interested in exploring what one cannot bear to know, one interested
in the imaginings of a sociality unhinged from the dominant conceptual
order. (Britzman 1998, p. 16)
It can be inferred therefore that applying discourse strategies that which

challenge the status quo and introduce a novel way of representing bod-
ies, identities and sexualities is product of conscious efforts, validated
by social and linguistic practices that allow the identification of original
reference communicative models.
As translators, being aware of these practices is crucial in order to
retain the performative functions of texts, and their performativity
in a wider sense that embraces all aspects of gender and queerness. In
order to achieve this, it is crucial that we are equipped with the transla-
tional knowledge structures mentioned by Cao (1996, p. 45)—that is:
“knowledge about the world and about the subject matter,” which are
essential for performing translation tasks. Communicative competence,
however, is not enough. The gender and queer experience in transla-
tion is not just about linguistic transfers. It is not just about conveying
approximate meanings. It is about honouring a baggage of experiences,
a life of discrimination, repression, censorship, castration, sex-shaming;
11 The Future of Academia, Gender and Queer Pedagogy …
191
stories of abuse (self-inflicted and inflicted by others), activism, losses,

violence.
In this respect, this volume sought to highlight some of the ethical
concerns involved in translation, which herein was used as a means to
build practice but also as a “dissident and resistant” tool to uncover new
meanings between languages, while at the same time translation was
used as an instrument representing the space in which the convergence
and transformation of the various cultural systems can be witnessed, not
exclusively in relation to language (Spurlin 2014b, p. 202).
Limitations in the time and resources available in higher education
institutions for courses and modules focused on gender-inclusive trans-
lation practices that question established realities and experiences via
classroom-based activities represented one of the main issues encoun-
tered by translation trainers. The work carried out by the trainers and
scholars included in this volume highlights the importance of matters
such as the authenticity of text materials used during training, demands
for the mainstreaming of minority representation and a need for better
lexicalization of minority experiences and identities. The lexicalization
of these experiences may require, as argued by Spurlin (2014a, p. 299),
an understanding of translation “not as a mere linguistic process or lin-
ear operation, but as intimately intertwined with new forms of textual
and cultural production, exceeding the reproduction of a text from one
language into another.”
As highlighted in our Chapter 1, higher education institutions are
increasingly integrating gender-inclusive agendas in their equality and
diversity agendas. However, their work often fails to reflect a truly inclu-
sive approach when it comes to choices in terms of the language they
use when communicating via their public platforms and, despite their
best intentions, this results in the exacerbation of the existing linguis-
tic oppressive structures rather than opting for norm-breaking choices
that would enhance the understanding of the importance of a more
progressive thinking towards sexual and social equality. It is therefore
paramount to challenge this seemingly innocuous praxis from within,
by making students aware of the dominant male-centric/heteronorma-
tive discourses surrounding them in most areas of knowledge, together
with the associated bias that may come with it, and by bringing in
192
pedagogical praxes that enhance students’ active role in deconstructing

those very same discourses. Alongside this approach, it is advisable to
raise awareness of the social implications of language use, especially in
contexts where gender-conscious language is lacking due to the relevant
sociocultural context or its very nature—that is, when it is gendered and
marked.
Translators, as primary agents of change and meaning, must be aware
of the ethical, social and ideological implications of their choices and it
is in the classroom that trainers must sow the seed of change by guiding
students to critique inequality and sexism in source texts and by encour-
aging them to see language as a vessel for that change. This should be
done by devising a methodology that allows students to work with
a variety of texts embedding a number of challenges, so as to trigger
a reaction in them and to urge them to take a stance to actively and
reflectively act upon those triggers and channel them towards gender-
positive and queer-positive productions of meaning. This would also
develop accountability for their interventions and increase their aware-
ness of their role within the translation process.
It is hoped that, by drawing attention to the current multifaceted
nature of gender/queer-based translation practices across the languages,
institutions and contexts outlined so far, more translation trainers carry-
ing out their roles in less favourable, understudied contexts will find the
inspiration and enthusiasm to engage as agents of change in their rel-
evant classrooms and in their profession by adapting or rethinking the
approaches and pedagogy expounded in this module and by embracing,
despite its challenges and deterrents, this otherwise exciting and una-
bashedly optimistic strand of study.
References
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New York Press.
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325–340.
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Kulpa, R., J. Mizielinska, and A. Stasińska. 2012. (Un)Translatable Queer?, Or

What Is Lost and Can Be Found in Translation. In Import–Export–Transport:
Queer Theory, Queer Critique and Activism in Motion, ed. S. Mesquita, Maria
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———. 2014b. The Gender and Queer Politics of Translation: New
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Index
A 65, 70, 104–106, 111, 117,

abortion 129 121–123, 135, 139, 146, 150,
academia 2, 3, 18, 47, 67, 89, 98, 151, 157, 158, 170, 179, 180,
154 192
accountability 11, 22, 23, 192
activist translation 92, 129, 135
alterity 28, 36–38, 40 B
Angels in America 116 Baer, Brian James 105
anorexia 31, 36 Ball, Alan 110
approach(es) 1, 2, 4, 5, 9, 10, 12–14, behaviours 4, 5, 11, 12, 20, 22, 177,
16, 23, 24, 29, 30, 35, 38, 56, 178, 190
65–67, 70, 71, 76, 78, 79, 84, Blackboard 38, 39
86–90, 93–95, 98, 105, 115, Bosseaux, Charlotte 109
121–123, 129, 131, 136, 151, Brossard, Nicole 30, 34, 37
159, 177, 189, 191, 192
Arcan, Nelly 30, 36
audiovisual translation (AVT) 3, 70, C
85, 91, 97, 103, 105, 109 classes 84–86, 89–92, 94, 96, 99,
autofiction 30, 32, 36 100, 106, 124
awareness 3, 5, 11, 12, 18, 22, 23, cognition/cognitive 4, 12–17, 23,
28, 34, 35, 38, 40, 50, 51, 56, 24, 32, 46
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 195

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04390-2
196
Index
comprehension 14, 23, 33, 54, 70, ethical neutrality 130, 175, 180
104 ethics of responsibility 139
corpus/corpora 19–22 ethics of the first person 131, 139
Corrius, Montse 3, 70, 104
courtroom drama 132
crime fiction 132, 133 F
critical pedagogy 47, 87, 89, 149 feminist pedagogy 41, 63, 64, 70,
critical translation 157 87, 88, 91, 94, 98, 139, 149
Cruising 116 feminist translation 3, 34, 64, 65,
cultural translation 129 83, 85, 86, 90, 91, 96, 129,
cultural turn 129 130, 139, 140
feminist translation strategies 3, 139
Fernández Cruz, Marco 104
D fidelity 64, 129
Dallas Buyers Club 107 footnotes 58, 130
deconstruction 129, 180 framework 2, 4, 10, 14, 16, 17,
De Marco, Marcella 3, 70, 104, 105 22–24, 36, 40, 48, 53, 65, 68,
desire 37, 84, 93–99, 131, 135, 158 70, 75, 87, 95, 158, 182
detective 133, 137 Friedkin, William 116
Díaz-Cíntas, Jorge 104
discourse 2, 4, 15, 16, 24, 46, 48,
50, 52, 57, 59, 65, 66, 68, 70, G
72, 73, 76, 79, 90, 95, 110, gay 19, 21, 88, 97, 110–112,
114, 127, 128, 132, 133, 138, 116–121, 124, 132
140, 177, 190–192 gayspeak 105, 106, 116, 118, 123
discourse analysis 4, 14, 15, 24 gender 2–5, 13, 17–19, 21, 23, 24,
discursive turn 129 27, 28, 31, 33–35, 37, 38, 40,
dubbing 106–112, 114, 115, 117, 42, 50–52, 54, 55, 57, 63–66,
118 68–76, 78–80, 83, 85, 86, 88,
Duras, Marguerite 32 91, 99, 104, 105, 109, 121,
122, 129, 133, 139, 145, 146,
148, 150, 151, 154–161, 167,
E 168, 175, 177, 178, 181, 182,
equivalence 59, 85, 129, 130 189, 190
ethical/ethics 5, 11–14, 16–18, gender advertising translation 68
21–23, 38, 47, 50, 89, 98, gender awareness 3, 5, 34, 35, 50,
105, 130–132, 135, 138–140, 51, 56, 70, 104, 105, 150,
174–176, 179, 181, 190–192 157, 158, 170
Index
197
gender-based violence 167, 173, 175 interpreters 5, 11, 12, 29, 84, 169,
gender-committed pedagogy 127, 171–177, 179–182
138–140 interpreter training 167, 169, 181
gender-neutral pronouns 51, 54, 55, irish literature 150
58
gender perspective 66, 146, 147,
150, 158, 161, 169, 171, 175, K
177–179, 181 Kaindl, Klaus 105
gender-sensitive approach 65, 79 keyness 9, 12
gender violence 5, 167–169, 171– Kohan, David 111
178, 180–182 Kushner, Tony 116
Grisham, John 127, 132, 134, 135,
138
L
Laufer, Batia 118
H lecturer 47, 53, 56, 76, 80, 89, 93,
Hanley, Julia 104 94, 97, 98, 100, 146, 149
Herron, Carol 104 legal translation 3, 127–130, 134
hijacking 130, 138 Le Monde 34
homosexual 19, 21, 104, 105, 109, lesbian 19, 21, 37, 88, 117, 119, 121
112, 114, 117, 119, 122, 131 linguistic 4, 14, 17, 24, 86, 90, 105
homosexuality 103, 106, 111, literary translation 4, 28, 38
117–119, 122
human rights 167, 182
M
Mankiewicz, Joseph 112
I methodologies 10, 16, 45, 92
ideological/ideology 4, 15–17, 27, Morris, Matthew 104
28, 47, 49, 50, 55, 64, 72, 80, Mutchnick, Max 111
86, 106, 114, 116, 119, 123,
128–131, 135, 139, 146, 147,
154, 158, 192 N
imagery 14, 148 naming practices 131
inclusive language 3, 64–66, 71, Nation, I.S.P. 118
73–76, 79 neoliberal university 93, 95, 97, 98
indirect sexism 128, 133, 135, neutral/neutrality 51, 52, 58, 74,
138–140 78, 84, 87, 99, 119, 128–131,
interdisciplinary 10, 104, 189 139, 153, 173, 174, 176–178,
180
198
Index
Nichols, Mike 116 135, 147, 152, 154, 169, 172,

non-binary representation 45, 51, 182
54–56 resistance 49, 130, 140, 145
non-sexist language 3, 50, 72 Richardson, Kay 123
Rubin, Joan 104
O
objectivity 128, 129, 175, 179 S
same-sex marriage 129
Sánchez-Mompeán, Sofía 109
P second language acquisition 103
pedagogical(ly) 15, 17, 18, 32, 34, Secules, Teresa 104
41, 48, 63–65, 72, 84, 86, 87, service learning 48, 54, 56
89, 90, 92–95, 97, 98, 140, sex 27, 50, 54, 117, 119, 120, 132,
192 148, 150, 175
performativity 37, 41, 85, 190 sexism 57, 64, 72, 87, 95, 128,
politics 55, 64, 85, 91, 96, 98, 105, 133–135, 138–140, 192
116, 131 sexist politics 64
positioning 69, 84, 94 sex-related stereotypes 133
preface 58, 130 sexual equality 65, 71, 127
presupposition 133, 153, 160 sexual inequality 128, 130
sexuality 4, 13, 21, 23, 27, 28, 31,
33, 36, 38, 40, 41, 50, 54, 83,
Q 86, 88, 91, 119, 121, 129,
queer pedagogy 4, 84, 86, 88–90, 132, 133
93–99, 190 Six Feet Under 110, 111
social 1, 4, 5, 10, 11, 15–17, 22,
23, 25, 34, 38, 40, 41, 46–49,
R 59, 63, 64, 66, 68, 70, 75,
Ranzato, Irene 5, 104, 110, 112, 80, 87–89, 91, 94, 98, 104,
116, 118 105, 118, 123, 129–131, 133,
relationships 4, 15, 55, 87, 88, 94, 135, 140, 146, 148, 155, 159,
122, 134, 151, 159, 160, 168, 160, 168, 174, 177, 179, 182,
175 190–192
research 1, 6, 9, 10, 12, 13, 16–19, social change 3, 87, 98, 140
23, 24, 28, 40, 48, 52, 65, socio-political perspective 90
68–70, 76, 80, 85, 86, 89, ‘soft’ legal texts 132
91, 92, 94, 97, 104–106, 123, specialized language 33, 34
Index
199
student(s) 4, 5, 10–13, 16–23, 145–159, 161, 162, 170, 175,

28–41, 45–48, 52–59, 64–66, 189–192
68, 70–76, 78, 80, 81, 85–89, translation as intervention 58, 85,
91–100, 103–112, 114–124, 90, 129–131, 146, 154, 158,
127, 134, 135, 137–140, 146, 192
148–159, 191, 192 translation as manipulation 3, 111,
subtle sexism 133, 135 115, 117, 118, 123, 130, 131
Suddenly, Last Summer 112 translation workshop 29, 30, 34, 35,
supplementing 130 38, 40
Susam-Sarajeva, Şebnem 104, 122 translator training 1, 2, 4, 9–13, 16,
Sycamore Row 127, 128, 133, 134, 18, 23, 85, 89, 90, 94, 96, 98
138 trauma 30–32, 39, 176, 177, 181
trouble 55, 88, 93, 94, 96, 97, 99,
135
T Trump, Donald 35, 91
teacher/teaching 4, 13, 24, 31, 32, typology 19
38, 41, 59, 63–66, 69, 70, 72,
73, 79, 80, 84–90, 93–98,
100, 123, 127, 133, 135, 140, U
149, 158 understanding 12–14, 17, 24, 29,
technical neutrality 175–178, 180 34, 39, 41, 42, 46, 50, 59, 72,
theoretical 2, 10, 14, 29, 30, 32, 54, 80, 83, 85, 86, 88, 95, 96,
85, 99, 105, 179 109, 111, 132, 146, 151, 170,
threshold concepts 28, 33–35, 38, 172, 176, 177, 191
40, 41 university marketing communication
A Time for Killing 134 79
trainees 11–13, 16, 23 University of Valencia 127, 134
training 1, 2, 4, 9–18, 20, 23, 63,
66, 79, 84–86, 88–90, 94,
96, 98, 169, 171, 174–177, V
179–182, 190, 191 Vallée, Jean-Marc 107
transformation 33, 83, 149, 191 violence against women 129, 133,
transgression 41, 42, 49, 155 167–170, 175, 178, 181
translation 1, 3–5, 9–19, 21, 23, 24, virtual learning 4, 38, 39
27–42, 46–50, 52–59, 63–73, von Flotow, Luise 30, 83, 84, 91,
75, 76, 78–80, 83–86, 88–99, 105, 130, 131, 135, 140, 145,
103–106, 108–111, 115, 118, 147
120–124, 127–132, 134–140,
200
Index
W Z
Will & Grace 111 Zwicki, Arnold M. 118, 119

DeMarco, Toto - Gender Approaches in The Translation Classroom

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GENDER

ISBN 978-3-030-04389-6 ISBN 978-3-030-04390-2 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018967278

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019

Cover image: © Elizabeth Foster/Getty Images

1 Introduction: The Potential of Gender Training

2 Turning Translation Training into Life Training 9

3 Parameters, Thresholds and Liminal Spaces: Designing

4 Social Action and Critical Consciousness in the

5 Teaching Gender Issues in Advertising Translation:

6 Queer(y)ing (Im)Possibilities in the British Academic

7 Gayspeak in the Translation Classroom 103

8 Indirect Sexism in John Grisham’s Sycamore Row

9 Ideological Transfer in the Translation Activity: Power

10 Integrating Gender Perspective in Interpreter Training:

11 The Future of Academia, Gender and Queer Pedagogy:

Elena Alcalde Peñalver is an Assistant Professor in the Department of

published mainly on the branding of beauty products and its discursive

SOS-VICS, a European project whose objective is to improve training

Translator Training has, for a number of years, been a key topic of

a wider set of skills relating to the effective use of technological tools

Vigo’s opening chapter (Chapter 2) offers an overarching perspective

more widely in the curriculum. As a result, universities fail to instigate

strategy; and how concretely gender-derogatory usages can be avoided

Translator and Interpreter Training: Mediation and Culture, ed. S. Hubscher-

1 Initial Considerations: Ethics

Recently, the focus has shifted to research methodologies (Williams

Moreover, training translators is gradually changing to e­ncompass

professional translation is a possible ethical action. Therefore, their

– How can this kind of training be organized and structured?

– How can trainees be ‘forced’ to refer to reflections and cognition in

To answer these questions, I carried out a research project with my

2 Looking for Additional Tools:

framework of analysis, which combines Cognitive Linguistics (CL) and

“make complex cognitive behaviour like translation possible” (Thagard

By CDA I mean discourse analysis which aims to systematically explore

Equally significant is Wodak and Meyer’s definition:

CDA may be defined as fundamentally concerned with analyzing opaque

Pedagogically, CDA has been used to provide insights about the

3 Combining CL and CDA in Translation

For this research project, I chose to analyze gender-related topics in

strategies, such as those related to direct and oblique translation (Vinay

– 45% lexical problems

(a) “what nature [lexical, structural, morphological, etc.] is the

1. What kind of text is it?

categorized according to some linguistic features or they relied on the

At the same time, however, to enable teaching that is broader in

and of the natural social order. Currently, it is used to oppose feminist

Saldanha, Gabriela, and Sharon O’Brien. 2013. Research Methodologies in

what further implications must we consider when this literary trans-

existing module options. The French section in the School of Modern

to be studied, engaging students through group discussions and Q&A

for introducing students to the concept of how questions of gender are

responses, they advocate the implementation of numerous strategies

and perspectives” (2010, p. 10). While reading and discussing such

specialized BA in Translation and Interpreting, the focus is on profes-

in which language, gender and power are intertwined. As the transla-

Translating transgressive articulations of genders and sexualities,

A final important point to explore in relation to the idea of the con-

integrated online discussion boards on the module’s site. I designate this

in advance of the weekly translation workshop. While this encourages

transformative, integrative and irreversible for the student in their edu-

Busby, E. 2018. Three in Five Students Sexually Assaulted or Harassed at University,

1 Initial Considerations: Ethics

Moreover, training translators is gradually changing to encompass

2 Looking for Additional Tools:

3 Combining CL and CDA in Translation

1 Situating Classroom Practices

3 Implementing the Project

2 Gender in Advertising Translation

2.1 Transcreation vs Advertising

2.2 University Marketing and Translation

2.3 Teaching Gender in Advertising Translation

3 Teaching Gender-Sensitive Translation

3.1 The Translation Module Design

3.2 Gender Respectful Linguistic Strategies

3.3 The Gender-Sensitive Translation Approach

Table 1 Contrastive forms of gender linguistic practices

Fig. 1 University of Alicante leaflet in Spanish

4. Taught during 4 weeks, 4 hours a week.

2 Feminist Activism and Translation

3 Exploring the Convergences

4 Teaching Translation Informed by Queer

5 Reflections on the Neoliberal University:

2 Language and Translation with Audiovisual