pu revêtir la peau du poète sans m`aliéner profondément. Car pour
Transcription
pu revêtir la peau du poète sans m`aliéner profondément. Car pour
(M)othering the Textor The Feminist Critique of Translation pu revêtir la peau du poète sans m’aliéner profondément. Car pour la traduire je devais à mon tour—déformation professionnelle oblige—occuper son poste d’observation et regarder le corps de cette femme-ange avec ses yeux à lui: faire mien son mépris, retourner contre moi (puisque c’est à elle que je m’identifie ici) sa violence verbale. Me faisant une violence que, soit dit en passant, aurait été tout aussi réelle, bien que d’un genre différent, si j’avais eu à traduire l’écriture d’une non-féministe. (16-17) Alongside Lotobinière-Harwood, and equally vocal in their political views, I would place translators and writers such as Sherry Simon, Barbara Godard, Nicole Brossard, and others from the group of writers and translators working in Quebec. In 1979 when Elaine Showalter wrote “Toward a Feminist Poetics” she lamented women’s role as “mere” translators, editors, and interpreters.Whereas male critics in the twentieth century have moved to center stage, openly contesting for primacy with writers, establishing coteries and schools, speaking unabashedly (to quote Geoffrey Hartman) of their “pen-envy,” women are still too often translators, editors, hostesses at the conference and the Festschrift, interpreters. To congratulate ourselves for working patiently and anonymously for the coming of Shakespeare’s sister, as Virginia Woolf exhorted us to do in 1928, is in a sense to make virtue of necessity. (128) These words are a far cry from the words we are hearing today from feminist translators. In a contemporary echo to Ellen Moers’ early recognition of the multiple manifestations that “heroinism” may take, today a recognition of the untapped potential for shifting the locus of power is occurring not only in translation but also in other areas such as editing, book reviewing, and anthologizing. With this recognition, politics becomes practice as many editors, reviewers, and translators refuse to sit quietly behind the text. Silence and invisibility are no longer considered appropriate behavior; instead, immodest, wanton delight is taken by the feminist translator in flaunting her presence. The feminist translator, affirming her critical difference, her delight in interminable re-reading and re-writing, flaunts the signs of her manipulation of the text. Womanhandling the text in translation would involve the replacement of the modest, self-effacing translator. Taking her place would be an active participant in the creation of meaning who advances a conditional analysis. Hers is a continuing provisionality, 77