Sex and translation: On women, men and identities

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Synopsis Much has been written on gender and language over the last two decades with an emphasis on feminist translation, on the translation of woman's body or on the re-discovery of a growing genealogy of translating — and translated — women in diverse languages and cultures (see Santaemilia & von Flotow, 2011). In this paper we wish to focus on the translation of sex-related language. Without a doubt, sex — and more specifically, sex-related language — is overwhelmingly present in our daily lives, in our texts, in our symbolic projections. Though traditionally proscribed for a number of reasons, the study of the translation of sex is nowadays more openly dealt with. Translating the language of love or sex is a political act, with important rhetorical and ideological implications, and is fully indicative of the translator's attitude towards existing conceptualisations of gender/sexual identities, human sexual behaviour(s) and society's moral norms. Here we explore the fluid, two-way relationships between sex and translation, and then go on to focus on the treatment of love and sex in the Spanish or English translations of the works of John Cleland, Almudena Grandes and Mario Vargas Llosa. This is a privileged vantage point from which to explore the complex construction of women and men in different languages and cultures, and to derive ideological and discursive insights into the constitution of gender and sexual identities.