“Thematic Adaptation”. On Localizing the Language of “Global Feminism” and Gender Politics in Transnational Feminist Translation Practice and Studies

Abstract

This article reviews the linguistic and socio-cultural challenges encountered in the many different attempts by “global feminism” to mobilize concepts deriving from gender politics worldwide: the term “gender” itself and derivations such as “gender mainstreaming” are discussed. Then the article moves to questions around the translation and adaptation of “international gender talk” and cites various discussions from the realm of transnational feminist Translation Studies, a relatively new approach to the problem of communicating “gender” issues across diverse cultural and linguistic borders. It ends with a description and assessment of a recent “localizing” translation project, namely Corps Accord. Pour une sexualité positive (Montreal, Les Éditions du Remue-Ménage, 2019), an intersectional, post-colonial and transnational feminist translation into French of selected chapters from Our Bodies, Ourselves, the famed American feminist reproductive health manual from the 1970s. “Thematic adaptation” is proposed and discussed as an appropriate translation strategy for such genderfocused materials.