The ‘engendering’ approach in audiovisual translation

Within academia gender analysis has been circumscribed mainly to Social Sciences. For years the focus of this analysis has been on the unbalanced representation of men and women as perceived through the use of the (sexist) grammatical and linguistic patterns of a language – for example, in literature – and the use of the images selected to portray male and female bodies – in the case of the mass media. With time, an interest in the implications that also the translation of written and audiovisual texts may have on the representation and perception of gender has grown, and attention has gradually shifted from the literary translation field to the audiovisual one. In the last decade, the study of audiovisual translation discourse from a gender perspective has ranged over a number of genres (TV series, films and commercials) and has resulted in a fruitful debate around the manifold approaches from which gender bias may be investigated, questioned and eventually reversed. In particular, De Marco (2012) has shed light on how much the consideration of audiovisual translation (AVT) as a social practice may benefit from implementing theories inherent to the multifaceted disciplines of Linguistics, Gender Studies, Film Studies and, obviously, Translation Studies. The present article discusses the extent to which such an interdisciplinary and ‘engendering’ approach may contribute to building a valid methodological framework within which AVT can be explored. At the same time, it highlights the limitations entailed by the difficulty of applying the same approach to the study of such a practical area – AVT – in which gender priorities are not perceived as important as other professional priorities.