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Translation and the Construction of Identity: Abstracts
Date: 12-14 August 2004
Venue: Sookmyung Women's University, Seoul, Korea
Brita Oeding
Fiction in translation potentially fills gaps in target polysystems (Even-Zohar
1997). A dearth or under-representation of a topic or a whole genre in a
domestic system can lead to the extensive import of what is lacking. This may
have economic, sociological as well as political reasons, and consequences. In
my paper, I will show the inter-relatedness of these factors using the following
example: the case of Germany’s intensive import of English-Canadian women’s
writing during the 1980s and part of the 1990s.
Panel 4: Translation and the Construction of Gendered Identity
Gender Construction in the Literary Polysystem: from Canada to Germany
School of Translation and Interpretation,
University of Ottawa, Canada
This case of intensive importation shows how translated texts and their critical
public reception can be influential and directive in domestic
gender-construction, and at the same time reveal public opinion on and
perceptions of gender. For my analysis, the German reviews of Canadian women
writers’ works are sources of the views that were being developed in regard to
feminism and women’s roles. And the success of these women writers in German
translation sheds light on German readers’ “need” for alternative role models
for women than those proposed by German fiction and imported texts from other
Western countries, such as the USA, during the two decades under investigation.
As postcolonial studies, polysystem theory, and more recent theoretical
approaches in the field of ethnography and culture have shown (Bourdieu 1993;
Venuti 1998; Wolf 1999), literary translation does not take place in a
politically or economically neutral space. Thus my paper will cover the
following topics: first, it will trace the reception of Canadian women’s writing
in German translation. This will cover translated writers such as Margaret
Atwood, Barbara Gowdy, and Carol Shields, and raise questions regarding the
exclusion of other, for example francophone, writers. Second, by giving an
overview of the literary landscape of feminist and women’s writing in Germany at
the time, it will outline the position these writings took in the target
polysystem, and discuss how this particular phase of Canadian women writers’
success in Germany also marks a general shift within German feminisms. Third, it
will shed light on the other agents involved in the translation process, and
discuss how both political relations between the source and target countries and
financial considerations directed the export-import movements.
© IATIS 2003