“The idea would be that the person who is translating assumes an active and responsible translator ethic," says José Santaemilia, professor at the Department of English and German Philology at the Universitat de València and director of the GENTEXT research group, which studies gender issues and sexual inequality. He has been the first to address the relationship between gender and translation in the Spanish State. "Academic studies on gender already bring a few decades of travel, and translation as well, but the allia“The idea would be that the person who is translating assumes an active and responsible translator ethic," says José Santaemilia, professor at the Department of English and German Philology at the Universitat de València and director of the GENTEXT research group, which studies gender issues and sexual inequality. He has been the first to address the relationship between gender and translation in the Spanish State. "Academic studies on gender already bring a few decades of travel, and translation as well, but the alliance of the two is very recent." The last congress of this group about this topic was celebrated a year ago at the Universidad de València and it was the origen for the book Traducir para la igualdad sexual, which has just been published.

The mith of neutral translation
“It is said that translation is the second olest ocuppation in the world and  and intermediaries between languages and cultures have always been lacking. Traditionally, it was said that translation had to be transparent, objetive and neutral. But in recent years it has been reported that this is not valid, on the contrary: translation is a a highly ideological activity. In fact, we no longer consider it only a linguistic operation, but rather an ethical operation, in which we have to make choices and choose not only the most appropriate term, but also the proper ideological burden. Translation has been always said to be faithful What we wonder today is: faithful to whom or what? ", Explains Professor Santaemilia.

Biased dictionaries
A pair of chapters of the book analyse gender inequality contained in dictionaries. "Until recently it was considered that dictionaries, as lexicographic repertoires, were neutral. But nowadays weknow that it is not, because the content is very influenced by the people who make the dictionaries. And since so far the vast majority of those who made dictionaries were men, it shows. Now, with the increase of women in these tasks, we already noticed a change, "says José Santaemilia. “For instance, in the Dictionary of Legal Terms, which is a basic tool in English-Spanish sworn translation, women are described in sexual terms and men in professional terms, in the meanings always described first man, definitions are usually in generic masculine, and there are gender biases that we can find in most dictionaries that are discriminating against women”.

Sexual morality, obsession of censorship
The archives of Franco regime censorship are a great source of examples of how the translation adapted to make it fit with what was considered appropriate for the Spanish society of the time. "The Franco censorship was concerned especially with what was said about the regime and ecclesiastical authorities, and also about sexual morality.  Censors, who were mostly religious, sought infractions of these aspects: a taboo word, references to divorce or abortion..., "says Santaemilia. This has been investigated by Cristina Gómez Castro, from the project TRAZO (acronym for translations censored) of the University of León and author of one of the chapters of the volume on translation of the American novel "Rich Man, poor man”. The book contains several scenes with explicit sexual content and, for example, where the woman main character says: “I’m horny and unlaid and disappointed” it was translated as: “Estoy cabreada y defraudada” so the reference to sexual desire was omitted. Whole sentences were deleted in other pages. The word erection was translated as emoción (emotion) or the sencence “me derrito” by I'm coming, eliminating the reference to orgasm.

Advertising translation, perpetuation of stereotypes
"In advertising translation texts have to be adapted depending on the languages and cultures of origin and destination. Between western languages there is usually not too much difficulty, but if Asian or African languages come into play, things get complicated. We have to be aware of what can affect the basic stereotypes of each society, or what things may offend, for example. This is fundametal when we talk about gender, because the conceptualization of a man or a woman can be very different from one society to another, and literal translataions will surely not be valids” says Santaemilia.

In this way, Montse Corrius, Eva Espasa (both from Unversity of Vic) and Marcella de Magro (from London Metropolitan University) have conducted an experiment with both translation and advertising students who have faced translation of several audiovisual ads. And in spite of the fact that students are inclined, theoretically, to avoid biased expressions and reject gender stereotypes, "in practice they are incapable of avoiding the use of the generic masculine, which makes women and girls invisible", as explained in the book

Towards an active and responsible translator ethics
Faced with this situation, Professor Santaemilia is committed to what he calls an active and responsible translator ethic. "When translating we can no longer think about doing it with neutrality; in fact, to translate is to say things almost in the same way. First, because there is no linguistic or structural correspondence between languages. But also, those who translate have to add a personal commitment and this involve to make choices”.
 

And he concludes: "The translator is not an invisible being in the task of translation, he always leaves his mark. That is why, when you talk about ideology and identity, you have to add this personal ethic: I am responsible for what I say, not what you say.  And dictionaries do not say how to do it, because, in the case of gender, comes into sexuality, relationships between sexes, the position of men and women in society, and so on. In addition, who translate have also to think about what he can do to help to the causes that he consider the most fair, because the translation can serve to make them known, to explain them. It is a personal commitment but also social”.