Translation Review - The University of Texas at Dallas

in the current age. The play hinges on meanings
of “postfeminism.” Parenteau-Lebeuf uses the
term many times within the text, clearly
situating her play and her main character within
the “postfeminist” age. The term is first used in
Scene 12, when Parenteau-Lebeuf’s protagonist
rebukes herself, saying, “Nous vivons l’ère du
postféminisme, Mlle Lamy.” 34 I translate this
statement as, “We live in the era of
postfeminism, Mademoiselle Lamy.” 35
Parenteau-Lebeuf’s views on “postfeminism”
evolve within the text itself. On the
simplest level, Irene-Iris is post-feminist by
reason of birth: she is the daughter of a feminist.
However, at many points within the play, Irene-
Iris is also “post-feminist” in its more usual
meaning: she is hostile to feminism. This
hostility, however, is complex: because she was
raised by Clarissa, a woman who is a vehement
1970s anti-patriarchy advocate, Irene-Iris’s
response cannot dismiss “feminism” wholly;
instead, she must find her relationship to it. The
play suggests — as does contemporary feminist
theory — that there is not just one “feminism.”
The Feminist’s Daughter dramatizes one
woman’s discovery of the intricacies of
feminism.
The character of Irene-Iris represents a
relatively unexplored subject position: the
woman who was raised feminist. In order to
translate a play like Dévoilement devant notaire,
a translator must have some awareness of the
history of feminism, the reception of feminism,
and the unique vantage point portrayed. There is
some risk that, without the tools of feminist
translation, a translator could oversimplify the
ambiguities within the text — for instance,
drawing out Irene-Iris’s hostility toward
feminism without recognizing her long history
with the movement. Similarly, since the text
hinges on issues of gender, it is important that
the gender of words be careful noted and
thoughtfully handled.
Strategy 2: Looking at Gender on a
Word-by-Word Basis
Another key feature of feminist translation
is the examination of how words are gendered in
one language, such as French, and then how this
gendering is translated into a differently
gendered language, such as English. The
linguistic choices made by translators reveal a
lot about attitudes regarding the cultural
meanings of gender. As a hypothetical example
of how such decisions can reveal translator
prejudices, Susanne de Lotbinière-Harwood
points to the title of Luce Irigaray’s famous
theoretical work, Ce sexe qui n’est pas un. The
French “ce” can mean either “this” or “that,”
depending on the situation. Irigaray’s title is
usually translated as This Sex Which Is Not One.
However, as Lotbinière-Harwood points out, it
could be translated as That Sex Which Is Not
One. Whereas “this” suggests togetherness
around a community — in this case, a sex — a
distancing “that” might arise in a translation by
someone unfamiliar with or hostile to the
discourse in which Irigaray engages. 36
Another example concerns the translation of
the French word auteure. In French, where all
nouns are gendered, the creation of new
feminine nouns is an activist strategy that makes
language more inclusive. Since the French word
usually used for “author” (auteur) is always
masculine, many Québécois women authors,
including Parenteau-Lebeuf, have taken to
calling themselves auteures. To translate
auteure into English, Lotbinière-Harwood
coined the word “auther,” in an attempt to retain
the femaleness. 37 Other neologisms include
Lotbinière-Harwood’s “other” for “une autre”
(a female “other”) 38 and Godard’s Lovhers,
which she uses for the title of Nicole Brossard’s
Les Amantes (“lovers” — both of whom must be
female and therefore lesbian). 39
For Parenteau-Lebeuf, I had to decide when
and if to use similar translation strategies.
Obviously, innovations like “other” only work
on the page and are unavailable to spectators in
a theater. In my work, I discovered that my
engagement with linguistic gender had less to do
with my use of highlighting strategies and more
to do with the gradual development of a
particular way of reading the text. Each time I
translated a gendered noun, I took stock of what
I was doing. By considering gender, I avoided
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