French Feminism Analysis

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gave rise to studies that situated the translated text in its social and historical circumstances and considered its political role, paying attention to ideological values, to cultural, economic and political inequalities, to individual choices and also, most importantly, to the ethics of translation.’ (Castro: 2013:). As Simon also states, translation studies have also been concerned with the central issues of feminism, which are the distrust of traditional hierarchies and gendered roles, deep suspicion of rules that define fidelity and the questioning of the universal standards of meaning and value (1996:10). Consequently, within the framework of a new understanding of fidelity, which is concerned with the strong reflection of women’s experiences …show more content…

In this respect, one of the major tools they refer to is no doubt language. In this respect, language and discourse are very important ideological tools. Aware of this fact, the issue of sexism in language and how sexist discourse reflects the patriarchy and male-domination become some of the major concerns of feminist writers and translators. Especially French Feminism has paid great deal of attention to language and how it shapes our thoughts as well as understanding and various strategies have been developed. As of 1970s, shifting styles, forms, and narrator’s voices, puns, neologisms and unusual syntax have been integral parts of feminist writing in France. Some feminist writers even allege that any language currently spoken in the world is more or less dominated by men, or even created by men, as a result of the disadvantage of the women in participating the social life and education. When one also considers how meaning making and language are interrelated, it becomes quite clear why language plays a very significant role for the feminist writer as well as translators as they are the main distributers of their ideas around the world. Many feminist theorists engaged in language related research claim that ‘in order to change the male-dominated language, both morphological and syntactical rules will have to be revised’ (Leonardi, 2007, 42). …show more content…

Von Flotow categorizes the criticism brought to feminist translations into three categories – mainstream ‘translatese’ of third world material, elitist translations and hypocritical translation (1998). Especially the issue of third world women’s writings has been broadly discussed during the recent years. Lately feminist theorists in the West have shown solidarity towards Third World women and promoted the publication of their books in Western Europe and North America. However this has caused those writers to feel the obligation to write in English or French to be able to publish their works in overseas. This situation has deprived them of the chance of expressing their experiences in their mother languages and the requisite to write in a different language, within the boundaries of different linguistic and stylistic systems, which has lead to misrepresentation of their experiences and perspectives. Gayatri Spivak in her famous essay ‘The Politics of Translation’ (1993), stresses that the interest of the West to the third world feminist writers has resulted in the appropriation and misrepresentation of Third World women’s writings. She states the importance of translating these women’s work from their mother languages in order to be able to reflect their individual experiences and comments ‘if you are interested in talking about the

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