Cover not available
Article published In:
Babel
Vol. 67:1 (2021) ► pp.99–117

Translating the queer body

 | Complutense University of Madrid | GIR TRADIC
The objective of this study is to enlarge the concept of translation with the theoretical basis of the proposals from Edwin Gentzler’s “post-translation studies” (2017) and Susan Bassnett’s “outward turn” (2017). These contributions represent a turning point in the field of translation studies due to the opportunities they present to discover new discursive limits in the rewriting process. Based on this extended concept of translation, this article analyzes the body as a text which is determined by acts of rewriting and, at the same time, as a subversive element that allows us to bring into question the social and cultural rules that define the normativity of sexuality. This article refers to feminist currents including LGBTIQ studies and queer theory, in order to build the necessary theoretical structure to analyze the power of (translated) discourses in the construction of the body and its sexuality. Finally, this article applies this proposal to the analyses of specific cases of non-normative bodies so as to observe the power and the influence of translation on the definition and classification of sexual identities.
Keywords: translation, queer body, LGBT studies, post-translation studies, outward turn
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Toward a concept of boundless translation
  • Performative bodies
  • Textual bodies in translation
  • Conclusions
  • References
Published online: 2 April 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00207.lep
References (57)
References
Bachmann-Medick, Doris. 2009. “Introduction: The Translational Turn.” Translation Studies 2 (1): 2–16. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baer, Brian James, and Françoise Massardier-Kenney. 2016. “Gender and Sexuality.” In Researching Translation and Interpreting, edited by Claudia V. Angelelli and Brian James Baer, 83–96. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Baker, Mona. 2006. Translation and Conflict. London and New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bassnett, Susan. 2014a. “Translation Studies at a Cross-Roads.” In The Known Unknowns of Translation Studies, edited by Elke Brems, Reyne Meylaerts, and Luc van Doorslaer, 17–28. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2014b. Translation. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
. 2017. “Foreword.” In Translation and Rewriting in the Age of Post-Translation Studies, edited by Edwin Gentzler, viii–x. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bielsa, Esperança. 2016. Cosmopolitanism and Translation: Investigation into the Experience of the Foreign. London and New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bielsa, Esperança, and Christopher Hughes, eds. 2009. Globalization, Political Violence and Translation. New York: Palgrave Mcmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bourcier, Marie-Hélène. 2002. “Prefacio” [Preface]. In Manifiesto contra-sexual. Prácticas subversivas de identidad sexual [Contrasexual manifesto. Subversive sexual identity practices], translated by Julio Díaz, Carolina Meloni, and Paul B. Preciado, 9–13. Madrid: Ópera Prima.Google Scholar
Brufau, Nuria. 2009. Traducción y género: propuestas para nuevas éticas de la traducción en la era del feminismo transnacional [Translation and gender: Proposals for new translation ethics in the transnational feminism era]. PhD diss., University of Salamanca.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
. (1993) 2011. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
. 2004. Undoing Gender. London and New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2005. Giving an Account of Oneself. New York: Fordham University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Castillo, Alejandra. 2015. Imagen, cuerpo [Image, body]. Buenos Aires: Palinodia.Google Scholar
Coll-Planas, Gerard. 2016. La carne y la metáfora. Una reflexión sobre el cuerpo en la teoría queer [The flesh and the metaphor. A reflexion on the body in queer theory]. Barcelona and Madrid: Egales.Google Scholar
Corbin, Alain, Jean-Jacques Courtine, and Georges Vigarello. 2006. Histoire du corps, 3. Les mutations du regard. Le XXe siècle [History of the body, 3. The mutations of the sight. The twentieth century]. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.Google Scholar
Cronin, Michael. 2006. Translation and Identity. London and New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2012. Translation in the Digital Age. London and New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
de Andrade, Oswald. 1991. “Cannibalist Manifesto,” translated by Leslie Bary. Latin America Literary Review 19 (38): 38–47.Google Scholar
de Mauro Rucovsky, Martín A. 2015. Cuerpos en escena. Materialidad y cuerpo sexuado en Judith Butler y Paul B. Preciado [Bodies on stage. Materiality and sexualized body in Judith Butler and Paul B. Preciado]. Madrid: Egales.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. 1967. L’écriture et la différence. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.Google Scholar
. (1999) 2000. “Hostipitality,” translated by Barry Stocker and Forbes Morlock. ANGELAKI: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 5 (3): 3–18. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1977. “Pouvoir et stratégies. Entretien avec Michel Foucault” [Power and strategies: Interview with Michel Foucault]. Les révoltes logiques [The logical revolts] 41: 89–97. [URL]
. 1978. The History of Sexuality. Volume 1: An Introduction, translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Gentzler, Edwin. 1993. Contemporary Translation Theories. London / New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
. 2012. “Translation without Borders.” Translation: A Transdisciplinary Journal 11.Google Scholar
. 2017. Translation and Rewriting in the Age of Post-Translation Studies. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gentzler, Edwin, and Maria Tymoczko. 2002. “Introduction.” In Translation and Power, edited by Maria Tymoczko and Edwin Gentzler, xi–xxviii. Manchester and Kinderhook: St. Jerome.Google Scholar
Godard, Barbara. 1991. “Performance / Transformance: Editorial.” Tessera 111: 11–18.Google Scholar
House, Juliane, María Rosario Martín Ruano, and Nicole Baumgarten, eds. 2005. Translation and the Construction of Identity. Seoul: IATIS.Google Scholar
Johnston, David. 2013. “Professing Translation: the Acts-in-Between.” Target: International Journal of Translation Studies 25 (3): 365–384. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2017. “Prólogo” [Preface]. In Dile que le he escrito un blues. Del texto como partitura a la partitura como traducción en la literatura latinoamericana [Tell her that I wrote her a blues. From the text as a score to the score as translation in Latin American literature], by María del Carmen África Vidal Claramonte, 11–14. Madrid and Frankfurt: Vervuert Iberoamericana.Google Scholar
Kroker, Arthur. 2012. Body Drift: Butler, Hayles, Haraway. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lefevere, André, and Susan Bassnett. 1990. “Proust’s Grandmother and the Thousand and One Nights.” In Translation, History and Culture, edited by Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere, 1–13. London: Printer Publishers.Google Scholar
Lotbinière-Harwood, Susanne. 1991. Re-belle et Infidèle. La traduction comme pratique de reécriture au féminin / The Body Bilingual. Translation as a Rewriting in the Feminine. Toronto: Women’s Press.Google Scholar
Lyotard, Jean-François. 1979. La condition postmoderne [The postmodern condition]. Paris: Éditions de Minuit.Google Scholar
Martel, Frédéric. 2013. Global Gay. Comment la révolution gay change le monde [Global gay. How gay culture is changing the world]. Paris: Flammarion.Google Scholar
Martínez Pleguezuelos, Antonio Jesús. 2018. Traducción e identidad sexual: reescrituras audiovisuales desde la Teoría Queer [Translation and sexual identity: Audiovisual rewritings from the queer theory]. Granada: Comares.Google Scholar
Muñiz, Elsa. 2015. “Presentación” [Introduction]. In El cuerpo, estado de la cuestión [The body, state of the art], edited by Elsa Muñiz, 9–12. México D.F.: La Cifra Editorial / Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana.Google Scholar
Naughton, Jake. 2018. “These Poetic Portraits Explore Gender Identity in a Community in Mexico.” New York Times, 9 May 2018. [URL]
Preciado, Paul B. 2002. Manifiesto contra-sexual. Prácticas subversivas de identidad sexual [The contra-sexual manifesto: Subversive practices of the sexual identity], translated by Julio Díaz and Carolina Meloni. Madrid: Ópera Prima.Google Scholar
2005. “Multitudes queer. Nota para una política de los ‘anormales.’” [Queer crowds: Note for a politics of the “abnormals”]. Nombres. Revista de Filosofía [Names. Journal of philosophy] 191: 157–166.Google Scholar
2016. “My Body Doesn’t Exist.” In The Documenta 14 Reader, edited by Quinn Latimer and Adam Szymczyk, 117–161. Munich, London and New York: Prestel Verlag.Google Scholar
Ribeiro Pires Vieira, Else. 1999. “Readings of Antropofagia and Haroldo de Campos’ Poetics of Transcreation.” In Post-colonial Translation: Theory and Practice, edited by Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi, 95–113. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Rich, Adrienne. 1980. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Experience.” Signs 5 (4): 631–660. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ricœur, Paul. 2004. Sur la traduction [On translation]. Paris: Bayard.Google Scholar
Santaemilia, José. 2017. “Sexuality and Translation as Intimate Partners? Toward a Queer Turn in Rewriting Identities and Desires.” In Queering Translation, Translating the Queer. Theory, Practice, Activism, edited by Brian James Baer and Klaus Kaindl, 11–25. New York and London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Torras, Meri. 2015. “El delito del cuerpo. De la evidencia del cuerpo al cuerpo en evidencia” [The crime of the body. From the evidence of the body to the revealed body]. In El cuerpo, estado de la cuestión [The body, state of the art], edited by Elsa Muñiz, 13–28. México D.F.: La Cifra Editorial / Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana.Google Scholar
Tymoczko, Maria. 2007. Enlarging Translation, Empowering Translators. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Tymoczko, Maria, and Edwin Gentzler, eds. 2002. Translation and Power. Manchester and Kinderhook: St. Jerome.Google Scholar
Venuti, Lawrence. 2013. Translation Changes Everything. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Vidal Claramonte, María del Carmen África. 1998. El futuro de la traducción [The future of translation]. València: Institució Alfons el Magnànim.Google Scholar
. 2007. Traducir entre culturas: poderes, diferencias, identidades [Translating between cultures: Powers, differences, identities]. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
. 2019. “Violins, Violence, Translation: Looking Outwards.” The Translator 25 (3): 218–228. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
von Flotow, Luise. 2009. “Contested Gender in Translation: Intersectionality and Metramorphics.” Palimpsestes 221: 245–256. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2012. “Translating Women: From Recent Histories and Re-translations to ‘Queerying’ Translation, and Metramorphosis.” Quaderns: Revista de traducció 191: 127–139.Google Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Iturregui-Gallardo, Gonzalo & Irene Hermosa-Ramírez
2024. Applying feminist translation strategies in audio description. Babel. Revue internationale de la traduction / International Journal of Translation / Revista Internacional de Traducción 70:3 ► pp. 334 ff. DOI logo
Argyriou, Konstantinos
2023. Comparabilidad transcultural de lo queer y lo trans: adaptaciones impredecibles desde el interior de “Occidente”. Mutatis Mutandis. Revista Latinoamericana de Traducción 16:1 ► pp. 151 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 9 october 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.