Anglicisma gender tulkošana un adaptācija kā kritiskās domāšanas impulss literatūras un kultūras studijās

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Nowadays, gender and sexuality have become the object of global interdisciplinary research, and, searching the common grounds for the description of the issue, a brand-new theoretical category of “gender” is being developed in the frames of the Anglophone feminist theoretical discussion. The category acquires its meaning in the frames of the “sex – gender” opposition and is meant as the distinction between a human’s biological self (sex) and the socially constructed conceptions about social roles and functions. Introducing the theoretical concept of “gender” into the international communication outside the Anglophone linguistic space, new theoretical, methodological, translation and adaptation problems have been revealed, especially in the languages, where the category of the grammatical gender is strongly related to the lexical and grammar field and the creation of the “sex – gender” opposition seems to be controversial. “Gender” in the nowadays English language functions as a poly-semantic category – the notions of “sex” and “gender” are used interchangeably or as partial synonyms. Various terminological solutions are being found for the recreation of the category in other languages, taking into consideration the field and contextual meaning. Translating European gender equality political documents into Latvian, the notion “dzimums” is mostly used. Various terms – “dzimums”, “dzimte”, “dzimumsocialitāte”, “dženders” – are used interpreting the works of feminism theoreticians. The mass media do not often translate the term, using the variants “dženders” or “genders”, often in the pejorative meaning, connecting it to some type of genderism ideology, foreign to the Latvian mentality and traditional culture. The aim of the article is to offer an insight into the theoretical discussions about the search for “gender” terminological equivalence outside the Anglophone linguistic space that flourished in the Western academic feminism in the 1980s and 1990s. The article is devoted to the most characteristic problematic cases related to the adaptation of the notion into the vocabulary of the Latvian humanities and social sciences and mass media.