Introduction to the Feminist Translation Network

I attended a series of talk about the Feminist Translation Network (FTN), a project from the University of Birmingham, to create a space where translators can share how they, in practice, work on translations in a feminist way. While there has been much academic research in the field, it has been hard to see the impact of this research on the practice of translation.

Besides an introduction to the FTN, what I found most interesting about this talk was the introduction to feminist translation as a whole. Before this talk, this is not a concept I had encountered in my studies or research, and found the perspective of incorporating activists elements in the practice of translation very interesting.

On top of bringing insights from the FTN, Dr. Hilary Brown shared tips on how education to feminist translation studies should be done, and the challenges it poses. I think what resonated with me most is the “freedom” associated with feminism: as a translator, we often have to take decisions on the vocabulary we use, the style we write in— why not then make a choice that tries to bring society forward instead of maintaining status quo?

I believe this resonated with me especially because I attended this talk while starting to learn about translation studies as an academic field, and the breadth of research done on different ways of handling translations. I found this approach refreshing compared to my previous translation work, which was a quite traditional exercice of rendering meaning as closely as possible from the source language into the target language.