Review of Gender and Translation - Understanding Agents in Transnational Reception

Abstract

this review addresses briefly the proposal of the editors of the book Gender and Translation: Understanding Agents in Transnational Reception and the content of its chapters, since they are summaries of several extensive researches of the group Travelling Texts: Translation and Transnational Reception (2014-2018) of the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Oslo. This work partnership was one of the developments of the research project Voices of Translation: Rewriting Literary Texts in the Scandinavian Context, with fundings by that university and the Norwegian government from 2012 to 2017. Reflecting on translation with a gender focus in the Scandinavian context, the volume gathers important historical and reception investigations, within a carefully contextualized perspective. Counting with scholars from different academic backgrounds, some more experienced in Translation Studies than others, the book brings studies on classical literature and women in Scandinavian reception contexts; gender as a central component in the reception of Swedish female authors abroad; women philosophers: from absence to gendered presence; and cultural agents: negotiating with gender ideologies. Then, what we can see in this volume is a valuable collaboration between Translation Studies and History, Literature and Philosophy with a gender focus, specifically in the Scandinavian context, which exemplifies how this type of research works in local specificities, an extremely important subject for the Feminist Translation Studies. By the means of this type of approach, it is possible to foster a kind of research that considers social phenomena in their complexity, in view of more egalitarian practices such as those regarded by feminisms.