Translating Gender or Translating Ideology: A Case of Male Feminist Translation?

Translation practices have always been at the core of many heated debates within the field of Translation Studies. These controversies are even stronger in the case of feminist translation practices, which deliberately tend to subvert the patriarchal language in order to establish an equal role for both women and translation in society. Feminist translation strategies allow the translator to become visible in the text and the source text (ST), in some cases, is an opportunity for open propaganda for feminist translators. There have been cases where some translations by women, who may or may not be deliberately feminists, have been put under severe scrutiny in order to determine whether their practice was/is ethical and free from prejudices and/or ideological shifts. This means that a translation carried out by a woman is more easily subject to investigations or criticism whereas male translators do not seem to experience the same treatment because it is taken for granted that their work is faithful and ethical. Is this the truth? The aim of this study is to carry out a contrastive analysis of an Italian novel written by a woman and translated into English by a male translator in order to account for possible ideological shifts and their implications for the target text (TT). This study is not meant to be a deliberate attack to male translation practice but rather a reflection upon it. Attention is also paid to the profile of the text in terms of information about the ST author (and the historical period in which the book was written) as well as the details of the book itself.