Gender in translation: training future translators to become aware of gender bias

Abstract EN

Given the importance of training in gender-sensitivity issues, this article focuses on raising gender bias in the learning/teaching of translation.

The classroom is viewed as the perfect space where prospective translators become aware of how gender is part and parcel of the source text and the target text, and how lexical and semantic choices are powerful to reveal underlying ideologies, attitudes and mind-sets.

This research project is corpus-based.

It was carried out with my under-graduate students studying the module of 'English and Translation.

' Text samples containing problematic gender issues were purposefully selected to bring about the reactions that I sought to make.

By adopting the critical discourse analysis (CDA) with its three dimensional framework: the descriptive, interpretive and explanatory, as developed by Fairclough (2003), in a pedagogically collaborative learning environment, the texts with the group discussions were meant to measure how training can practically sensitize future translators and interpreters to the salience of androcentrism in language use hence triggering in them the need for change.