Il Femminismo a parole e le parole nel Femminismo: alcune considerazioni sulla traduzione.

Abstract It is argued by media, people and feminist thinkers, such as bell hooks, that too often and for too long there has been a misconception of feminism, due to different reasons, one of which is also linked to translations. Misconceptions such as: “feminists think they are better than men”, “All feminists are lesbians”, “feminists hate men”, “feminists don’t wear make-up”, “only women can be feminists”, “Feminists Cannot Be Stereotypically ‘Feminine’”, “feminists do not care about how they look”, “feminism is outdated”, just to mention some of them. To quote from the Council of Europe (COE) website: Jokes about feminism and stereotypes about feminists persist, and many of these are also homophobic and assume that being lesbian is something ‘bad’. In fact, being a feminist is not something particular to any sex or gender: there are women and men who consider themselves feminists, some are gay or lesbian, some heterosexual, bisexual or transgender - and some may identify differently. The concept of feminism reflects a history of different struggles, and the term has been interpreted in fuller and more complex ways as understanding has developed. In general, feminism can be seen as a movement to put an end to sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression and to achieve full gender equality in law and in practice. Therefore, in my work I would like to focus on what it means to translate feminism. First of all, in my literature review, thanks to scholars such as Chamberlain, Godard, Lotbiniere-Harwood, Simon, Von Flotow, Venuti, Adamo, Baker and others, I will explore the importance of translation before and after 1700 in Europe and United States when women were not allowed to have access to literature, so that translation became their only means to gain access to literary education. Translators and women have historically been the weaker figures in their respective hierarchies: translators are handmaidens to authors, women inferior to men (Simon 1996: 1). Translation is simply assumed to be not-original, which suggests its ‘lack’ of originality, authority, creativity; hence the relegation of translation to a subordinate position, handily expressed as a passive sexual being subordinate to an authoritative master. Moving from this, I will present a brief outline of feminism from 1700 till modern times, focussing in particular on the segregation of women in history and thus on the importance of education and translation. Then, I would like to illustrate why it was important for women to start translating texts on feminism, and what kind of changes feminist translation brought to the lives of women in the 1970s and 1980s, who were translating from French into English, and in my case from English into Italian. The case study of my thesis is an original translation of three chapters from the book Feminism is for everybody: passionate politics (2000) by writer, activist and feminist bell hooks and the second one is from a collection of writing from different women entitled Feminists Don’t Wear Pink and Other Lies”, published in 2018 and curated by writer and Pink Protest founder Scarlett Curtis. In particular, my focus will be on the technical difficulties and peculiarities, from the point of view of the translator, of translating works of feminism. In other words, my research is based on three levels: 1) The specific feature of feminist texts for translation (what challenges do they pose); 2) The role of the translator of feminism texts (e.g. visibility, ideology etc.); 3) Issues related to Translation Studies (terminology, equivalence, culture, register, inclusion etc.).