Social gender in translation : evidences

Abstract EN

-The translation of gender has become one of the challenges that translators face when dealing with languages that pattern gender differently.

This is because languages may not only differ greatly in the way they encode the category of gender in their lexical and grammatical systems but also in the expectations of their relevant cultures concerning what is meant by ' gender „.This is applicable to translation between English and Arabic , which differ not only in how gender is rendered in their linguistic system ( the former pronominally but the latter pronominally and grammatically ) , but also in the way they load nouns with social content which the diversity that members of these two communities think and perceive things.

The aim of this paper is to show the extent to which ideological considerations can play role when Iraqi college students translate English nouns denoting occupations into Arabic .Two tests are given to forty students of translation at an advanced stage.

In Test One, the students are asked to translate twenty English sentences including occupational titles such as „doctor‟ into Arabic .

The sex of each referent title is unknown or not relevant , e.g.

can I have a word with you , doctor?.In Test Two, the same students are asked to decide on the ' appropriate ' reference pronoun(s) of these occupational titles in another set of twenty sentences , e.g.

The doctor was very honest with his / her patient .

The results of Test One reveal a malebiased interpretation of these nouns and the preference use of a masculine generic word where the masculine form refers to both women and men where the opposite can be equally grammatical.

The results of Test Two reveal that the students subdue their choices to their social , cultural and psychological constructs and generally fail to assign most occupations to both genders on equal base but reinforce and reflect existing social asymmetries