Womanhandling Ibsen’s A Doll’s House: Feminist Translation Strategies in a Spanish Translation from 1917

Abstract

This article analyzes a 1917 indirect translation of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (1879) by María Lejárraga (1874-1974) as an example of early feminist translation. Relying on the existing theoretical outcomes at the intersection of gender and translation studies, it proposes a way of analyzing diverse translation strategies as a means for womanhandling the literary text, and thus making the most of the prevailing feminist interpretation of its international reception while reinforcing the budding feminist debate in Silver Age Spain and facilitating a specific understanding of the play. The importance of this case study as an example of early feminist translation is based on several factors: (a) this theatre text had a symbolic value in first wave feminism; (b) this Spanish translation was widespread due to Ibsen’s international fame and the national fame of the (overt) mediator Gregorio Martinez Sierra; (c) the feminist activism of the (covert) translator that made her select the text to spread a “thesis” she deemed necessary in Spain at that time for the developing of feminism; and (d) the numerous interventions at different levels (textual, contextual and paratextual) traceable in the translation.

Interaction Between Gender and Translation (1995-2022): A Systematic Literature Review

“…Another stream of literature focuses on feminist translation (Sánchez, 2011;Woods, 2011;Yoon, 2021;Bessaïh, 2021;Muñiz, 2018;Palacios-González, 2008). These studies provide evidence that the influence of feminism on translation was consistent across all the chosen studies.…”

“…Feminist and patriarchal ideologies affected translation differently S.-B. Lee, 2020, Hartman, 1999, Orozco, 2013, Hassen, 2011, Bengoechea, 2011, Tolliver, 2002 Feminist translators actively intervened the original texts through translation in a feminist approach Bessaïh, 2021, Woods, 2011, Yoon, 2021, Sánchez, 2011, Muñiz, 2018, Palacios-González, 2008, Castro, 2013, Hassen, 2020 Cultural gender conventions Translation complied with the assumed gender beliefs and values of the intended audience Feral, 2011, Wang et al, 2020 Socio-cultural and ideological factors influenced the translation Karoubi, 2013, Tsai, 2022, Leonardi and Taronna, 2011 The Impact of Translation on Gender Gender (stereotypical) portrayals of fictional characters Translation decisions affected how female characters were portrayed Herná ndez Socas et al, 2022, Zeven & Dorst, 2021, Bazzi, 2022, Ranzato, 2020 Gender stereotypes were perpetuated, reproduced, altered, reinforced, or tempered through translation Zeven and Dorst, 2021, Liu, 2015, Vera, 2012, De Marco, 2006, Bianchi, 2018, Wang et al, 2020Tang, 2022, Williams, 2022, Dong, 2022 Gendered language and meanings Translation affected the language of the characters Inoue, 2003, Furukawa, 2012…”

Identifying (indirect) translations and their source languages in the Finnish National Bibliography Fennica

“…A comparison of the different language versions might reveal the SLs of these translations, but due to time constraints, that is not possible here (cf. Fernández Muñiz 2016).…”

Feminist Discourse and Its Translation: Macro- Strategies in Fihrist’s Feminist Utopias Series

“…Recent research has been conducted in the field of feminist translation both in Türkiye (cf. Bozkurt, 2014;Rençberler, 2021;Çelik, 2022;Erkazancı Durmuş, 2022) and globally, including countries such as Korea (Lee, 2023), Spain (Muñiz, 2018), Italy (Federici, 2018), China (Sun et al, 2023), and India (Irshad & Yasmin, 2022). Within this regard, taking the feminist translation theory to its core, this study aims to scrutinize the feminist discourse in five early feminist utopias, which were translated into Turkish by the publisher Fihrist within the series of "Feminist Utopias", and their translations comparatively within the framework of von Flotow's feminist translation strategies.…”