GENDER AND TRANSLATION IN CATALAN . ARCHAEOLOGICAL GROUNDWORK FOR ASSESSING THE STATE OF AFFAIRS

In the last twenty-five years, interest in translation studies and its relation to gender has given rise to abundant and diverse research. This article seeks to offer a panoramic vision of the intersection between gender and translation in the Catalan language context, a point of departure for future research. On the one hand, we present the principal works, panoramic and specific, whose aim is the retrieval of Catalan women translators and their works. On the other, we review the theories which have dealt with the intersection between gender and translation in Catalan.

In El futuro de la traducción (The future of translation) (1998), África Vidal Claramonte takes the conceptualizations of "archaeology", "genealogy" and "ethics", terms made fashionable by Michel Foucault in the context of the humanities in the sixties and seventies, and applies them to the theory of translation.In order to study the possibility conditions within which meaning may be created or modified or may simply escape, Foucault proposes an investigation in three stages: the first is an archaeology of knowledge, the second, a geneaology of power, and the third, an ethic proceeding from the previous stages.
In reference to Foucault"s theories, Vidal Claramonte affirms that "archaeology defines and characterizes a level of analysis in the domain of facts; genaeology explains or analyses the level of the archaeology" (1998: 142).That is to say, in the case of translation, the difference between archaeology and genaeology is that the former is a process that is merely descriptive of translation practice while the latter is an explicative process which poses many questions, such as: why has this particular text been translated?who chose it?to what purpose?for what readership? at what period of time?what political, cultural, social and institutional contingencies have favoured or prejudiced it?etc.Given that Foucault"s third stage is the analysis of the subjectivization of self, as the moral agent, Vidal Claramonte states that, after establishing an archaeology and genaeology of translation, it is essential to continue to a third stage, an ethic of translation, because "the essence of translation is the possibility it creates for opening up, for dialogue, for changing standpoints, for connecting two cultures " (1998: 147).
Despite the necessity of completing these three stages in any translation research and the interest such a process arouses, this article limits itself to an archaeological investigation of the intersection between gender studies and translation in the context of the Catalan language, leaving for later research the genaeological and ethical aspects of this field.Conforming to the terminology used by Foucault and Vidal, we divide the article into two parts: I) "Archaeological groundwork for a history of Catalan translation in the feminine", a section in which we present the principal works, both general and specific, whose aim is the retrieval of Catalan women translators and their works; II) "Archaeological groundwork for a theory of Catalan translation in the feminine", a section which surveys the theories dealing with the intersection between gender and translation in Catalan.
It must be said that the paleographic task carried out here is part of a broad and ambitious target: a determination of the state of affairs in Catalan women"s translation and translation studies, which, at the same time, invites further research through generic and specialized studies of translations and women translators, and compares the work in this field with that carried out in other majority and minority languages and cultures.There is a long way to go.We need to develop a general cartography of gender studies and translation (not limited to majority cultures and languages) in order to bring to light translations and women translators who, for many reasons but mainly because they write and translate in minority or minoritized languages, whether European, Asian, African or American, do not appear in texts on translation theory and practice, usually written in English.We are aware that this work, concentrating as it does on the field of Catalan, is a tiny link amongst the infinite links that go to make up the chain of translation historiography in the feminine.Even so, each link is important, different and indispensable for the whole that we are aiming to construct.

1) Archaeological groundwork for a history of Catalan translation in the feminine
In the last twenty-five years, interest in translation studies and its relation to gender has given rise to abundant research in the so-called First World.The study of this intersection entails the retrieval of women translators and their prefaces, introductions, notes or personal correspondence that reflect on the process of translation.Throughout the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, women translators in the western world (mainly German, English and French) slipped apologetically and with self-effacing explanations into the sphere of the official discourses of text authorship.The works of Tina Krontiris (1992), Douglas Robinson (1995), Sherry Simon (1996), Luise von Flotow (1997) andMicaela Wolf (2005), amongst others, demonstrate that feminine translation theory was not born in the 20th century, but began with the unobtrusive incursion of a series of women translators over the centuries.In the case of Catalan, even though we do not have writings on translation from as far back as in other cultures, our women translatorsfew and far between in the 19th century and mainly of the 20thhave left us an important legacy which is closely related to the vicissitudes of the country.
In "Les escriptores catalanes vuitcentistes i la traducció" (Catalan women writers of the eighteen hundreds and translation) ( 2006), a survey of women"s translation into Catalan in the 19th century, Ramon Pinyol concludes: "In the 19th century, for a woman it was difficult to be a writer, even more so to be a writer in Catalan, and much more so to be a translator into Catalan" (2006: 75).In this desert that was translation, he writes, "there is not one single book translated into Catalan in the whole of the century" (2006: 73) and notes that the translating activity of women writers was minimum and always in the context of the press.He pays special attention to two writers.The first of these is Joaquima Santamaria i Ventura , known by the pseudonym of Agna de Valldaura, who, in the seventies and eighties, translated poems by Frederic Mistral, Victor Hugo, Rosalia de Castro and Joseph Roumanille for the magazines Calendari Català and Lo Gay Saber.The second is Francesca Bonnemaison de Verdaguer , founder of the first women"s public library in Europe, and the wife of the lawyer and political activist, Narcís Verdaguer i Callís.Between 1894 and 1898, under the pseudonym of Franar (a combination of the first syllables of their names), Bonnemaison translated some fifty texts by some twenty authors, the majority of them Provençal, for La Veu de Catalunya.T'he intellectual initiatives of his wife were never really welcomed by Verdaguer i Callís and anecdotes on the subject abound.Bonnemaison confided a curious and surprising one of these, with reference to her translations, to Rossend Llates: "I did the translation and then he would say: "Do it again, less literally, read it and steep yourself in it!And then, do it again in your own way".On occasions, after making me do it three times, he would send the first version" (1972: 169).
The majority of these writings have resulted from two projects.One of these is the Diccionari de al traducció catalana, coordinated by Montserrat Bacardí (Autonomous University of Barcelona) and Pilar Godayol (University of Vic), which is a dictionary of men and women translators of all times, born before 1950, who have translated into Catalan.This is due to be published early in 2011.A second important initiative is the research on "Gender and Translation" being carried out within the research group "Gender Studies: translation, literature, history and communication" of the University of Vic, coordinated by Pilar Godayol. In 2006, this group organised the first exhibition on Catalan women translators and published Traductores (Bacardí and Godayol 2006).In addition to these, there have been more specific activities such as the International Congress on Gender and Translation, organised by the Faculty of Humanities, Translation and Documentation of the University of Vic within the IX Translation Seminar at Vic on 9-10 March, 2005, or the Seminar on Translation and Literature, dedicated to Maria Aurèlia Capmany and organised by the Arbonès Chair of the Faculty of Translation and Interpretation of the Autonomous University of Barcelona on 18-19 October, 2006.A selection of articles from these seminars can be found in issues Nos.13 and 14 of Quaderns.Revista de Traducció.Thanks to all these undertakings, it has been possible to retrieve the work of more than a hundred women translators, some of them already active before the Civil War, others during the sixties, seventies and eighties, with the awakening of an ideological and literary consciousness after the dictatorship.Here we will proceed to present some of these women translators and the critical attention afforded them.
After some isolated examples of works translated by women, such as those that appeared in 1910, Eulàlia Capdevila"s Un retrat, a translation of a work by Nadina Kolorrat or Maria Antònia Salvà"s translation of Mistral, Les illes d'or, in the decade of the twenties Carme Monturiol  began the "long and difficult" task of translating into Catalan verse all of Shakespeare"s Sonnets, a complete edition that appeared in 1928.In the "Brief notes of introduction", she describes how, after "transcribing into Catalan some of the Sonnets, entirely for my own pleasure", the encouragement of the great teacher Pompeu Fabra led her "to continue translating them, with the purpose, fixed from that moment, of completing them" (1928: 21).Monturiol explains the two motivations behind her translating of Shakespeare"s poetry: "The great admiration the Sonnets arouse in me" and "the fervent desire that those Catalans whose lack of knowledge of English prevents them from enjoying the beauty of the originals may gain an insight into their great poetic value" (1928: 22).
Monturiol is one of the first Catalan women to voice the importance of translation and to consider the process of translating.In spite of the modesty with which she speaks, as, for example, when she explains that she showed Fabra the translation of some thirty poems and he "was kind enough not to find them too bad" or when she confesses that she often "flagged" and thought that she would not be able to finish, she presents the author and the work she has translated rigorously and in detail, and explains the reasons for bringing them to the attention of the Catalan readership.This version of Els sonets de Shakespeare is therefore important both for the translator"s notes that accompany it and for the rewriting in itself, "given the characteristics of the original and the ambition with which it was undertaken" (Bacardí and Godayol, 2008: 51).Sam Abrams praises this translation and stresses three of the virtues it displays: "the daring to overcome the modesty of predecessors and produce a complete version; the modernization of the language, following closely Fabra"s dictates; and the greater artistic risks taken in the creation of Catalan originals from Shakespeare" (2003: 18).In "Carme Monturiol, traductora dels sonets de Shakespeare" (Carme Monturiol, translator of Shakespeare"s sonnets) (2005), Dídac Pujol carries out a critical evaluation of Monturiol"s translation, concentrating on some aspects of the content (such as the sonnet sequence, the Christian mentality of the translator, the losses and the alterations of metaphor) and of the form (the decasyllables, alliterations, rhymes and language model).Pujol concludes by supporting Abrams" approbation, with the exception of the third aspect.
Before the Civil War a fair number of women translators were working to a greater or lesser degree: among these were Carme Nicolau (1901-1990), Maria Perpinyà (1901-1994), Maria de Quadras (1903-1982), Maria d"Abadal (1905-2003), Anna M. de Saavedra (1905-2001) and Adela M. Trepat (1905-1964).But, as Barcardí and Godayol point out, "the best-known is the writer M. Teresa Vernet (1907Vernet ( -1974)), the winner of the prestigious Crexells prize of 1934 for her novel Les algues roges (Red seaweed)" (2008: 53).Vernet represents the step from translating for pleasure to translating as a profession and thus lays the foundations for the professionalization of women"s translation in Catalan.She translated from the English into Catalan Frank Swinnerton"s Nocturne (Nocturn, 1932) and Aldous Huxley"s Two or Three Graces (Dues o tres gràcies, 1934).Fifty years later her translation of Huxley"s masterpiece Point Counter Point (Contrapunt, 1986) appeared.After the war, she gave up her own literary creation and concentrated on translating.In the sixties, she translated into Catalan works by Erich Fromm, Graham Greene and James Joyce, whose magnificent A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man appeared in her translation, Retrat d'un artista adolescent, in 1967.In Dona i literatura a la Catalunya de preguerra (Women and literature in pre-war Catalunya) ( 2006), Neus Real studies the life and literary works of Vernet, including her work as translator.
The war and the dictatorship had an annihilating effect on Catalan translating in general and on the incipient translation by women.As Bacardí and Godayol put it, "Exiled both within and outside their country, deprived for more than twenty years of channels for the diffusion of foreign works (controlled by the merciless Francoist censorship), women translators withdrew into a terrible silence" (2008: 55).While for those who remained translation was a private experience or, at most, for the benefit of a limited circle of friends (as in the case of the poet and librarian Rosa Leveroni, 1910Leveroni, -1985)), for those obliged to leave it became their best means of earning a living.In Anna Murià.El vici d'escriure (Anna Murià.The vice of writing ) (2004) and "Anna Murià, traductora (in)visible" (Anna Murià.The (in)visble translator) (2006), Montserrat Bacardí explains how, when Murià went to live in Mexico with her husband, the writer and translator Agustí Bartra, in August 1941, translation became her main source of income.Often working alongside Bartra, though her contribution was rarely mentioned, she translated a wide range of texts from English and French into Spanish.The only translation into Catalan undertaken during her exile was that of Riders to the Sea (Genets cap a la mar, 1958) by the Irish playwright, John Millington Synge.Dolors Udina studies this version and Murià"s possible motives for translating this work in "Anna Murià: Genets cap a la mar de J.M.Synge" (2009).
As Catalan literature gradually begins to recover from the paralysis of the dictatorship, some women feel that it is their responsibility to accept the challenge of enriching their own language by translating universal works of literature.Translation becomes a way of creating new, but minimally normalized, language which would give fresh life to the Catalan language as a whole.These women are often also known, of course, for their contributions to other areas of cultural activity.This is the case of Carme Serrallonga , with more than fifty translations of German, English and Italian authors, and of Maria Aurèlia Capmany , with more than twenty titles translated from French, Italian and English.
A co-founder of the Institut Escola and the Isabel de Villena school, Carme Serrallonga translated into Catalan some twenty works of great playwrights.She translated from English, French, Italian and especially German, and explained that she began to study this language in order to gain a thorough insight into the work of Brecht, whose The good person of Sezuan (La bona persona de Sezuan) she translated for Ricard Salvat in 1966, and later followed this with five more of Brecht"s plays.She also translated from the German into Catalan the works of leading authors such as Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Peter Handke, Goethe, Mozart or Alfred Döblin.She also worked with English and North American literature (Forster, Clarke and Bowles), Italian (Bassani, Pirandello and Scola) and French (Sartre).In spite of being a pedagogue, it was not until 1983 that she began to translate children"s literature into Catalan with En Jim Botó i en Lluc el maquinista, the translation of Michael Ende"s Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver, commissioned by the publishing house La Galera.From then on, as Godayol, says, "it was not only a "pastime", but, with more than thirty titles translated in six years, a "record" and a means of helping to normalize and enrich the language of children"s and juvenile literature in Catalan" (2010).On 8 May, 2009, at the Faculty of Humanities, Translation and Documentation of the University of Vic, Marta Company read the research paper "Carme Serrallonga, traductora", in which, apart from introducing Serrallonga"s work as a translator, Company presented an inventory of the writer"s personal library.
The other outstanding translator of the sixties is the writer, theatre and cultural activist Maria Aurèlia Capmany.Between 1963 and 1968 she translated for the publishing house Edicions 62 more than twenty novels by French, Italian and English authors, the most important of whom were Italo Calvino, Pier Paolo Passolini, Vasco Pratolini, Cesare Pavese, Elio Vittorini (by means of whom she introduced the realist Italian prose of the post-war period), Marguerite Duras, Alain Fournier, Pierre Véry, James M. Cain, Terry Stewart and Georges Simenon (six of whose detective novels she translated in four years).In the seventies and eighties, she concentrated on essays and classic titles of children"s and juvenile literature.Shortly before her death, she had begun the translation of the last book of Proust"s In search of lost time, (La recerca del temps perdut), Time regained (El temps retrobat) (1991), which her partner, Jaume Vidal Alcover, was not able to complete.
There are probably more studies of the work of Maria Aurèlia Capmany than of many other translators in Catalunya.Some of the earlier ones are "Maria Aurèlia Capmany, traductora de novel•les en francès" (Maria Aurèlia Capmany, translator of French novels) (Gregori 2002) and "Maria Aurèlia Capmany, traductora" (Maia Aurèlia Capmany, translator) (Godayol 2002), both included in the volume Maria Aurèlia Capmany: l'afirmació en la paraula (Maria Aurèlia Capmany: assertion in words) (Palau i Martínez Gili eds.2002), which is a collection of proceedings from the International Colloquium Maria Aurèlia Capmany, organized by the Rovira i Virgili University in April, 2001.More recent studies are "Maria Aurèlia Capmany, introductora a Catalunya de la narrativa italiana" (Maria Aurèlia Capmany, pioneer of Italian narrative in Catalunya) (Arenas 2007), "Georges Simenon traduït per Maria-Aurèlia Capmany" (Georges Simenon translated by Maria-Aurèlia Capmany) (Biosca 2007) and "Maria Aurèlia Capmany, feminisme i traducció" (Maria Aurèlia Capmany, feminism and translation) (Godayol 2007), which appear in the issue No. 13 of Quaderns.Revista de Traducció and were presented during the II Seminar on Translation and Literature, "Translating against Francoism", dedicated to the translators Maria Aurèlia Capmany and Manuel de Pedrolo.Carme Arenas, in her article on Capmany"s translations from the Italian of more or less realistic and committed works, reaches a conclusion that can be applied to her work in general: In the translations of Maria Aurèlia Capmany, there is a clear desire to make Catalan endure, once the first difficult post-war years had been overcome, as a language of literary prestige, rich in lexis, probably the result of her pre-Civil War education, agile solutions, spontaneous dialogues, and freqüent use of idioms and colloquialisms (2007: 27).
Also in the sixties, Montserrat Abelló (1918), motivated, as was Capmany, by the wish to preserve the literary prestige of the language, began her career as a translator.There have been many tributes to Abelló over recent years and there are extensive critiques of her work.Amongst others is the dossier included in the issue No. 16 of Quaderns.Revista de Traducció, which gathers the contributions to the round table on her work as a translator, organized on the occasion of her 90th birthday, on 1 February, 2008.During this session, Elena Carné (2009) surveyed Abelló"s long career as a translator, Mireia Mur (2009) had recourse to her own experience of sharing with her the rewriting of Plath"s Ariel to describe Abello´s technique when translating poetry, and finally, Francesc Parcerisas (2009) theorized about the clichés that normally circulate with regard to translating poetry.Amongst various other writings is that of Pilar Godayol, who has dealt with the personal and translational link between Plath and Abelló in an article of 2009.
Along with Serrallonga, Capmany and Abelló, other women translators, who were not perhaps so outstanding, made their contribution to a relative regularization of the profession during the decade of the sixties.Bacardí and Godayol (2008: 57-58) refer to some of these: Johanna Givanel (1907Givanel ( -1989)), a translator of pedagogical essays, detective novels, children"s literature and comics; Hermínia Grau de Duran (1897Duran ( -1982)), who, along with Carme Vilaginés, completed the translation of the two volumes of Simone de Beauvoir"s The second sex (El segon sexe); Eulàlia Duran (1934Duran ( ), who, between 1964Duran ( and 1968, translated the four volumes of Pierre Vilar"s Catalunya in Modern Spain (Catalunya dins l"Espanya moderna) and Helena Vidal (1946), a translator of Gorky and Pushkin.
The publishing of new collections which promoted translated texts, such as Les Millors Obres de la Literatura Universal (1981), Textos Filosòfics (1981), Clàssics del Pensament Modern (1982), Clàssics Moderns (1985) or Les Millors Obres de la Literatura Universal: Segle XX (1986), and the relative linguistic and literary normalization that the country was experiencing at that time, explain the appearance of a considerable number of professional translators who, on the whole, cannot be considered specialists, in the strictest sense of the term, but who produced thoughtful and accurate versions.Perhaps the figure of Roser Berdagué symbolizes "the emergence of professional translators in Catalunya: graduates who know various foreign languages and their own, but have not been through university faculties of translation" (Godayol 2007a: 44-45).
Working from English, French and Italian, Roser Berdagué has translated into Spanish some three hundred titles covering a wide range of subject matter: narrative, literary criticism, linguistics, economics, history, politics, biography, science fiction, philosophy, psychopedagogy, art, sexology, gardening or cookery.She has also translated some forty works of various authors into Catalan, mainly for the publishing houses Edicions de l"Eixample, Laertes and Joventut: Enid Blyton, Carles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Herman Melville or Edgar Allan Poe, amongst others.Dolors Udina gives us an idea of Berdagué"s activity as a translator in " "O no existim o som excel•lents, no hi ha terme mitjà".Entrevista a Roser Berdagué" ("Either we do not exist or we are excellent; there is no midway".An interview with Roser Berdagué) (2006).
In the eighties and nineties, another type of professional appears on the scene, the writer who combines her writing with translation.In order to pay for the time devoted to writing, these translators translate ancient and modern classics, either for pleasure or when commissioned.In many cases, the authors and works chosen for translation are carefully selected with the aim of retrieving names generally ignored by the literary discourses of our country.These translators include Maria Àngels Anglada (1930-1999), Helena Valentí (1940-1990), Maria Antònia Oliver (1946) and Maria-Mercè Marçal (1952-1998).
Maria Àngels Anglada encouraged the publication of Greek and Latin writers, both male and female.She translated classic works in the anthology of lyric poetry written by women Les Germanes de Safo (Safo"s sisters) (1983) and in the Epigrames (Epigrams) of Meleager of Gadara (1993).She also carried out a task of interpretation in three travel books, Paisatge amb poetes (Landscape with poets) (1988), Paradís amb poetes (Paradise with poets) (1993) and Retalls de la vida a Grècia i Roma (Scenes of life in Greece and Rome) (1997), in which she made use of poetry to reproduce in essay form scenes from Greece and Italy.In addition, in her novel L'agent del rei (The king"s agent) (1991), she paid tribute to the poet and translator of Dante"s Divine Comedy, Andreu Febrer.To commemorate the tenth anniversary of her death, on 20 April, 2009, the University of Vic organized the Seminar "The work of Maria Àngels Anglada today", in which specialists analysed the various literary facets of the author.Two communications dealt with her work as a translator: "Les germanes de Safo: una mirada poètica sobre la vida de les dones gregues" (Safo"s sisters: a poetic view of the life of Greek women) by Montserrat Jufresa, and "Maria Àngels Anglada i la traducció: de les germanes de Safo a les de Mendelssohn" (Maria Àngels Anglada and translation: from Safo"s sisters to those of Mendelssohn) by Pilar Godayol.One contribution spoke of the translation of Anglada"s work into other languages: "La traducció a l"armeni de Quadern  1982) by Chekhov, which she translated from the Russian with the specialist in Slavonic languages, Ricard San Vicente.Oliver is one of the Catalan women translators who has reflected on the translation process.As she declares in "La feina de traduir" (The task of translating) (1992: 261), an article on the translations of Maria Aurèlia Capmany, "Translation is also betrayal, and until you accept that the translations you do are a betrayal of the original work, you will not be able to translate with a clear conscience, and even more, you will not do it well".On 22 January, 2010 at the Faculty of Humanities, Translation and Documentation of the University of Vic, Teresa Usó read the dissertation "Maria Antònia Oliver, traductora", the first academic paper on this aspect of the writer"s work.
The poet Maria-Mercè Marçal chose to translate works by writers from various different geographies and contexts: T'he Hidden Woman (La dona amagada) (1985) by Colette, Coup de Grâce (El tret de gràcia) (1990) by Marguertite Yourcenar, L'Oneiropompe (1992) by Leonor Fini, and, in collaboration with the Slav specialist Monika Zgustova, Requiem and other poems (Rèquiem i altres poemes) by Anna Akhmatova and T'he Poem of the End (Poema de la fi) (1992) by Marina Tsvetaieva.Marçal chose Colette, Yourcenar, Fini, Akhmatova, Tsvetaieva and Renée Vivien, some of whose poetry she included in the novelized biography La passió segons Renée Vivien (The Passion according to Renée Vivien), not only because, by bringing their work into Catalan literature, she was questioning the texts and their "correct" readings as often imposed by dominant criticism, but also because these writers explored themes for which the Catalan poet felt an affinity, such as, love, disillusion, the body, maternity, lesbianism and loneliness.Marçal as a translator and the influence of translating on her own writing are dealt with in the following articles: "Traduir poesia russa" (Translating Russian poetry) (2004) by Monika Zgustova, "Maria-Mercè Marçal: (Re)presentation, textuality, translation" (2004) and "Entre Atenea i la Medusa: les mares literàries de Maria-Mercè Marçal" (Between Athena and the Medusa: the literary mothers of Maria-Mercè Marçal) (2008a) by Pilar Godayol, and "L"altra mirada que perfà la pròpia: Maria-Mercè Marçal com a traductora" (T'he other viewpoint that completes one"s own: Maria-Mercè Marçal the translator) ( 2008) by Dolors Udina.T'he last two texts appear in the commemorative dossier published by the journal Reduccions on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the poet"s death.Dolors Udina concludes her text with a phrase that very appropriately sums up Marçal"s work as a translator: "the excellence of her poetic voice at the service of the feminine other, of all of us" (2008: 216).
As we come up to the present, the number of women translators increases, and more general and specific works are necessary on translators, periods, publishing houses and translations in order to fill the gaps in the historiography of women"s translation in Catalan, which we have begun to build up only over the last two decades.Nevertheless, from the studies at our disposal we can conclude that the women translators of the 20th century have left us a magnificent legacy, very substantial as regards translations and moderately so in writings on translation, which encourages us to take up the challenges of the 21st century in the field of women"s translation.

Archaeological groundwork for a theory of Catalan translation in the feminine
The intersection between the feminist literature of the late seventies and the early eighties and translation studies gave rise in Quebec to a translation movement which claimed a new definition of the role of the woman literary translator.This led, in the nineties, to theoretical reflection on the intersection between gender and translation.The following studies are of particular interest: "Theorizing feminist discourse / translation" (1990), by Barbara Godard; Rebelle et infidèle: La traduction comme pratique de ré-écriture au féminin / The Body Bilingual: Translation as a Re-writing in the Feminine (1991), by Susanne de Lotbinière-Harwood; Gender in Translation.Cultural Identity and the Politics of Transmission (1996), by Sherry Simon, and Translation and Gender: Translating in the 'Era of Feminism' (1997), by Luise von Flotow.These works by Simon and von Flotow have been essential references for later research in the field all over the world.It should also be said that the Canadian feminist school of translation has also created controversy (Arrojo 1994;Vidal 1998;Martín 2008;Castro 2009).
In the same period, and in North America, several other writings appeared which reflected on the theory and practice of translating in the feminine: "Gender and the Metaphorics of Translation" by Lori Chamberlain, published in the journal Signs in 1988 andreissued in Rethinking Translation (Venuti, 1992), in which the author connects the worlds of gender and translation through metaphor; "The politics of translation" (1992) by Gayatri Ch.Spivak, in which the author presents the difficulties and contradictions inherent in translating texts by authors of the misnamed Third World into Western languages, mainly into English; or "Women in Translation: Current Intersections, Theory and Practice" (1994) by Carol Maier, in which the author gives more importance to "woman-identified translation practice" than to "feminist translator", a practice which would imply a permanent clarification of the feminine identity.Maier"s theoryexpressed in part in "Interviewing Carol Maier: a woman in translation" (Godayol 1998)has become one of the hubs of later theorizing and restating outside and inside Catalunya (Godayol 2000 and2005a;Martín 2005;Vidal 2005;von Flotow 2007).
The claims made by Chamberlain, Maier, Simon and von Flotow for a new look at the metaphors and androcentric theories cultivated by translation discourses over the centuries have also produced results in Catalan writings.As a result of a doctoral thesis, Pilar Godayol published Espais de frontera.Genere i traducció (Intervening spaces.Gender and translation) (1998), which was translated into Italian in 2002 by Annarita Taronna under the title Spazi di frontiera.Genere e traduzione.This work relates, for the first time in Spain, gender studies and translation, making use of the critical and methodological tools that international writings on gender and translation have made available over recent decades.Following on the afore-mentioned North American monographs, Espais de frontera is a pioneering work in Europe because it examines the multiple intersections between gender and translation from a non-anglophone perspective and concentrates on the difficulties and contradictions inherent in translating into non-dominant languages from a woman"s viewpoint.It includes an analysis of intervening cultural spaces, based on Chicana literature, and a reflection on translating hybrid languages and texts.
"Frontera spaces: Translating as/like a woman" (2005a), in which Godayol theorizes further on the experience of translating in the feminine, is one of twelve articles that José Santaemilia includes in Gender, Sex and Translation: The Manipulation of Identities (2005), a collection of special interest for the diversity of authors and approaches to the subject.This work arose from the First International Seminar on Gender and Language, held from 16-18 October in Valencia, the papers from which, under the title Género, lenguaje y traducción: actas del primer Seminario Internacional sobre Género y Lenguaje (El género de la traducción -La traducción del género) 2003, also coordinated by José Santaemilia, contain some works on gender and translation in Catalan: "Traduccions de la identitat femenina en la premsa escrita" (Translations of the feminine identity in the press) by Caterina Molina and "A gendered voice in translation: translating like a feminist" by Eva Espasa, in which she refers to her experience of translating Diana Fuss" Essentially speaking (En essència: feminisme, naturalesa i diferència) (1999).Espasa"s translation of Fuss is part of the collection "Capsa de Pandora" of the publishing house Eumo Editorial, a collection whose purpose is to publish translations into Catalan of feminist essays.In this collection there are three more translations: Madonna as Postmodern Myth (El mite Madonna) (2002), by Georges-Claude Guilbert, translated by Lydia Brugué; Genders (Gèneres i identitats sexuals) (2004) by David Glover and Cora Kaplan, translated by Miquel Casacuberta; and Ningú no neix dona.Antologia de textos d'El segon sexe de Simone de Beauvoir (No-one is born a woman.Anthology of texts from T'he Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir) (2009), edited by Marta Segarra and with the 1968 version by the translators Carme Vilaginés and Hermínia Grau.
As has already been mentioned, on 9-10 March, 2005, the University of Vic hosted the first International Congress on Gender and Translation.A selection of papers was published in the issue No. 13 of Quaderns.Revista de Traducció.Amongst the contributions in Catalan, the following theoretical texts are of particular interest: "Per part de gènere: belles infidelitats de la literatura comparada i la traducció" (As regards gender: the "beautiful infidelities" of comparative literature and translation) by Meri Torras, in which the author approaches translation from the perspective of comparative literature and praises the role played by it in this discipline; and "La Màgica Doremi com a eina per a reflexionar a l"aula sobre la traducció del gènere del japonès" (Using Doremi Magic to reflect in the classroom on the translation of gender in Japanese) by Jordi Mas, in which the author presents didactic proposals with regard to gender based on the Japanese animated series Oja-maho Doremi.T'he other four articles, already mentioned, deal with the history of translation in Catalunya ("Les escriptores catalanes vuitcentistes i la traducció" by Ramon Pinyol i Torrents, "Anna Murià, traductora (in)visible" by Montserrat Bacardí, "Helena Valentí, fúria i traducció" by Pilar Godayol and "La poeta traductora Montserrat Abelló" by Ricard Torrents).
In addition to the study of women translators, translations into Catalan and translation theory written in Catalan, there is another area of research that is coming to the fore and promises to gain importance in the near future, that of the study of self-translations and the translations of Catalan women writers into other languages.Lluïsa Cotoner is a precursor in this field, with her analyses of Carme Riera"s self-translations into Spanish (Cotoner 2001 and2006).In addition, in 2007 at the Faculty of Humanities, Translation and Documentation of the University of Vic, Judith Sánchez read the dissertation "Les traduccions de Mercè Rodereda a altres llengües" (The translations of Mercè Rodereda into other languages).
In the course of the XIV Translation Seminar: International Congress "Translating the classics", organized by the University of Vic on 17-18 March, 2010, the number of papers dealing with translations of Catalan classics was a clear demonstration of the interest this field arouses today: "Cartografia de les traduccions de l"obra de Caterina Albert (Victor Català)" (Cartography of the translations of the work of Caterina Albert (Victor Català) by Francesca Bartrina, "Les traduccions de l"obra de Maria-Mercè Marçal" (The translations of the work of Maria-Mercè Marçal) by Caterina Riba, "La plaça del diamant: llenguatge literari, cultura i traducció" (The Time of the Doves [trans.David Rosenthal]: literary language, culture and translation) by Núria Codina, "Semblava de seda..., l"experiència traductora de Mercè Rodereda" ( It seemed like silk... the experience of translating Merce Rodereda) by Judith Sánchez, "La mort i la primavera de Rodereda: una nova vida en anglès" (Death in spring; a new life in English) by Martha Tennent, and "Mercè Rodereda"s well-known novel La plaça del diamant by David Rosenthal" by Michael Ugarte.Mercè Rodereda, the subject of the last four papers, has the widest international reputation amongst our women writers.T'he same congress also demonstrated an academic interest in the study of the reception of foreign women writers translated into Catalan: "Mrs.Dalloway de Virginia Woolf traduït per C.A. Jordana" (Virginia Woolf"s Mrs. Dalloway translated by C.A.Jordana) by Victòria Alsina and "Dues clàssiques en català: Mansfield and Woolf" (Two classics in Catalan: Mansfield and Woolf) by Pilar Godayol.Both Alsina and Godayol had already worked on the reception of English women writers in Catalan, Alsina with "Les traduccions de Jane Austen al català"(The translations of Jane Austen into Catalan) (2008) and Godayol with "Virginia Woolf.Cinc-centes lliures i una cambra pròpia (Virginia Woolf.Five hundred pounds and a room of one"s own) 2005b, and "Traductores de Virginia Woolf al català" (Translators of Virginia Woolf into Catalan) (2009b).There is also an evident on-going interest in the analysis of questions of gender in translation, demonstrated by papers such as: "La traducció de l"Alcorà al català.Comparació traductològica de passatges relatius a les dones" (The translation of the Koran into Catalan.A translational comparison of passages dealing with women) by Claude Carcenac, "Qüestions de gènere (sexual i/o textual) en la traducció al català del Diari de Tosa per Anfòs Par" (Questions of gender (sexual and/or textual) in the translation into Catalan of the Diary of Tosa by Anfòs Par) by Jordi Mas, and "Gender issues in the Catalan and Spanish translations of Doris Lessing"s preface to T'he Golden Notebook" by Susagna Tubau.In conclusion, these are obvious examples of the increasing attention being paid to gender studies and translation in Catalunya.
In spite of the inventory of books, articles and congresses presented in this article, we must insist on the need for more studies on the subject, with the aim of enriching translation theory written in Catalan.Needless to say, we are enormously grateful to the specialists who both here and abroad have contributed to the field in other languages, but it is obvious that in order to build up a general theory of translation in the feminine, we need to be familiar with the specific characteristics of each linguistic and cultural background, that is to say, we need to bring to light the activity of women within this discipline in specific geographical contexts, especially those that are a minority or are minoritized, both Western and non-Western.To achieve this, we must begin at the beginning: as Vidal Claramonte said, our first task is to "pose many questions, such as: why has this particular text been chosen for translation?who chose it?in what society? to what purpose?" (1998: 146).

Coda
The objective behind this first archaeological outline of women translators and translation studies in Catalan is to stimulate the production of more archaeological, genaeological and ethical studies which will define the past and present role of women translators and translation in the contemporary Catalan literary system.We know that it is incomplete and that there is sure to be diverse material still to be found in libraries and personal archives.Our obligation and responsibility is to unearth it and find the means of bringing it to the attention of the academic world and the public in general.In "La traductologia catalana: historia i tendències" (Catalan translation studies: history and tendencies), Ricard Torrents states that "in recent decades, Catalan translation studies have acquired the full and differentiated condition of a science within the field of textual sciences" (2008: 9).From the standpoint of gender studies and translation in Catalan, our aim is to enrich them further: for ourselves and for the women of the future.
Her first translations into Catalan were of three very differing classics: Cat among the Pigeons (Un gat al colomar) (1965) by Agatha Christie, Under the Net (Sota la xarxa) (1965) by Iris Murdoch, and T'he Yellow Wallpaper (El paper de paret groc) (1971) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.Apart from the translation of the occasional text as a commission, it was not until after her retirement from teaching in the eighties, that Abelló devoted herself to writing poetry and translating.Her particular interest was in the translating of work by Anglo-American women poets and the divulging of it in Catalan.A result of this need for the recognition of women writers were the translations of Winter Trees (Arbres d"hivern) (1983), Three Women (Tres dones) (1993) and Ariel (Ariel) (1994) by Silvia Plath, An Atlas of the difficult World (Atlas d"un món difícil) (1994) by Adrienne Rich and the bilingual anthology Cares a la finestra (Faces at the window) (1993), which is a collection of poetry by twenty English-speaking women poets of the 20th century, of whom the most important are Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich and Silvia Plath.Abelló has always declared her affinity with Plath"s poetic discourse, and in 2006 she published the volume Soc vertical (I am vertical), containing translations of all Plath"s poetry written between 1960 and 1963.In the course of the tribute to Montserrat Abelló at the University of Vic on 10 March 2005, she explained how she discovered Plath during a to England at the end of the seventies.Her words are paradigmatic (Torrents 2006: 100): "I immediately empathised with her.At long last I had found a person who understood poetry as I did.She also wanted to live Life with a capital L, have a husband, children, be a poet, have everything...I felt the same way.A feeling of rebellion".
d'Aram" (The translation into Armenian of Quadern d'Aram) by Maria Ohannesian.The coming issue of the journal Ausa (2011) will contain a dossier of these communications.Helena Valentí lived for a time in England, where she worked in various universities and combined this with translating as a means of earning a living.She translated into Spanish works by William Blake, Najib Mahfuz and Doris Lessing, whose T'he Golden Notebook (El quadern daurat) became a landmark both in her work and her life.In 1974 she returned to Catalunya, and in 1983, she decided to alternate her own writing with translating into Catalan.Besides the great affinity she felt for Lessing, she was also fascinated by Virginia Woolf, whose To the Lighthouse (Al far) she translated in 1984 and A room of one's own (Una cambra pròpia) in 1985.She was also interested in the work of Katherine Mansfield and translated her A Married Man's Story (Un home casat i altres crueltats) and The Garden Party and other stories (La garden party i altres contes) in 1989.Two articles have been published on Valentí"s work as a translator: "Cap a una genealogia de dones traductores: Helena Valentí" (Towards a geneaology of women translators: Helena Valenti) (2005) by Marta Pessarrodona, and "Helena Valentí, fúria i traducció" (Helena Valentí, vehemence and translation) (2006) by Pilar Godayol.Through her translations, the novelist Maria Antònia Oliver has made accessible three titles by Virginia Woolf, of whom she was a great admirer: Orlando (1985), T'he years (Els anys) (1988) and The Waves (Les ones) (1989).She has also translated other classic titles of English and French literature, such as Moby Dick (1984) by Herman Melville, The Confederacy of Dunces (Un conxorxa d"enzes) (1990) by John Kennedy Toole, Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus ) (Frankenstein o El Prometeu modern) (1992) by Mary Shelley, T'he Castle of the Carpathians (El castell dels Carpats) (1998) by Jules Verne, or T'he Steppe and other stories (L"estepa i altres narracions) (