Gender and paratextual visibility: A case study of Iranian fiction translators

Abstract

Radical orientation in the feminism movement evoked numerous criticisms for a more neutral and non-politic paradigm toward women. The urge for visibility is a long- established intersection between gender and translation. Paratexts as elements outside the text proper have created a promising avenue for redirecting translators’ visibility outside the textual background. This study sets out to investigate how male and female fiction translators apply their prefaces as an opportunity to elaborate on themselves as translators and their profession as a delicate and serious task. One hundred translators’ prefaces in the fictions translated from English to Persian by females and males were analyzed through thematic analysis. The contents of translation- and translator-oriented themes reflected more tendencies of female translators toward talking in the first-person point of view and asserting more personal accounts while men chose the third-person point of view and focused mostly on introducing original authors and their works. The overall results of this study showed that female and male translators were reluctant to talk about their translation process and its possible challenges or delicacies.