Gender equality and/or inequality?

Abstract

This article presents a study of publicly available Svenskt översättarlexikon ‘The Swedish Encyclopaedia of Translators’ (SwET 2009), most probably the first digital encyclopaedia of translators. The study is situated in the fields of the sociology of translators, (literary) translator studies, and translation history, and focuses on how female translators are described, characterized and evaluated in the version of SwET from 2022. Three research questions are addressed in the paper: (1) What is the ratio of entries presenting female and male translators in the SwET? (2) What is the quantitative treatment of the partners in the sub-category “Translator Couples”? (3) And what are the descriptions, characterizations and evaluations of the partners in that sub-category? In response to the three RQs, the same three situations emerge: (a) gender equality and inequality, (b) gender equality, and (c) gender inequality. Possible explanations for the results reported are presented and discussed. Finally, proposals for future studies of digital translator encyclopaedias are presented.