Poststructuralism and Feminist Translation

The concept of ‘original’ writing and a translation that was derivative and secondary (translated into gendered terms, that of the privileged male and the dependent female), took a beating with the advent of poststructuralist theories of language. The concept of original writing, for instance, was undermined by Jacques Derrida. The author’s originality was termed a myth. Concepts of intertextuality questioned the notion of originality, and the boundaries of an original work were considered hard to define. If the originality of a work is called into question, then so is the notion of the secondary nature of translation. All forms of writing, in that sense, are translations. Or the converse is also true; as Derrida states: “Translation is writing; that is, it is not translation only in the sense of transcription. It is a productive writing called forth by the original text” (qtd in Chamberlain, 325). Derrida did not consider translation as a secondary activity, but neither did he idealize it. Rather, he problematized the binary opposition between original and reproduction and by extension, the ‘femininity’ of translations. However, Chamberlain points to a drawback in Derrida’s theory – it does not take into consideration the historical or cultural contexts of specific texts, “circumstances that cannot be ignored in investigating the problematic of translation. For example, in some historical periods women were allowed to translate precisely because it was defined as a secondary activity” (326). Feminist translation tries to place translations in their contexts and understand it as an activity that is guided by socio-cultural influences as well as the translator’s ideology.