Abstract:

Drafting international institutional/legal texts is one of the most delicate instances of social writing, as it affects our lives at personal, social and collective levels. In an era in which full equality between the sexes is promoted, international legislative and political bodies are especially encouraged to remove any traces of racial, ethnic or sexual discrimination. In this paper my primary aim is to analyse how international gender-equality texts – carefully worded and crafted in English – are translated into Spanish, one of the world’s leading languages and one of the main doors to (international) effective gender equality. Gender-equality institutional texts are highly sensitive, and their translation is not simply a linguistic matter, but rather a socio-cultural and ideological issue. The Spanish versions may be the result, on the one hand, of ideological negotiation and compromise, and on the other hand, of personal struggle to come to terms with the meaning of gender equality. Translating international gender-equality texts is a privileged site to test the various meanings of gender across cultures.

Author: José Santaemilia