ABSTRACT
Gender studies is an interdisciplinary field that examines gender as a cultural and social construction. Woods’s study of Scots-speaking Willa Muir’s translations of some of Franz Kafka’s best-known novels into English is a model example of feminist translation studies scholarship focusing on women’s invisible labour of translation and on the intersection of gendered, cultural and linguistic power asymmetries. The publication of a special issue on Translating Transgender in Transgender Studies Quarterly has further contributed to gendering translation by focusing on what falls outside of the male/female binary. The horizon of expectation is shaped by a United States reception environment that sees Muslim women as the ultimate victims of gender oppression, whilst figuring liberation from gender oppression as an individual rather than a collective pursuit. By gendering translation, we significantly problematize traditional disciplinary narratives which rely on the representation of translators, interpreters, publishers, editors and other gatekeepers as disembodied subjects acting in the name of a supposedly homogenous target culture.
