Breaking Binaries: Rethinking Gendered Metaphors in Translation Theory

In efforts to understand the complexity of translation, theorists have often turned to metaphor. As Lori Chamberlain (1988) shows, some of these metaphors have mirrored the androcentric hierarchy of Western society, subordinating women and translation. Since the 1980s, feminist translation theorists and translators have sought to dismantle this patriarchal view of translation using woman-centred metaphors. However, their understandings of womanhood and gender often exclude genderqueer and trans identities. In the past decade, translation studies research on queer and trans issues and representation has grown, though it has largely been written from white Western academic and literary perspectives. This thesis investigates the inclusivity of gendered metaphors of translation in feminist, queer, and trans translation theory. I suggest that if translation studies is to represent the diversity of gender identities that exist worldwide, attention must be paid to this works accessibility, to intersections of oppression, and to marginalized understandings of gender.