Translating Puns in Feminist Writing
MA Thesis English Language and Culture, Utrecht University
Krista Schutte 0222879
Supervisors: dr. C. Koster and dr. R.G.J.L. Supheert
January 2007
Contents
1.
Introduction ............................................................................................................ p. 3
2
Feminism and Language ………………………………………………………… p. 5
2.1
Feminism and Translation ………………………………………………………. p. 6
2.2
Mary Daly and Gyn-Ecology ……………………………………………………. p. 10
3
Translational Difficulties ………………………………………………………… p. 14
3.1
Puns ……………………………………………………………………………… p. 14
3.2
Neologisms ………………………………………………………………………. p. 21
4
Translating Gyn/Ecology ……………………………………………………….... p. 23
4.1
The Translation …………………………………………………………………... p. 28
4.2
Footnotes to the (Process of) Translation ……………………………………….. p. 40
Appendix ………………………………………………………………………………… p. 46
Sources …………………………………………………………………………………... p. 59
2
1
Introduction
Gender has long been an important theme in the discussions concerning the quality of
a translation. In these discussions, gender is used in a metaphorical sense, as they have often
taken place in terms of the fidelity of the translation to its source text. The relationship
between these two is likened to the “contract” of marriage. The act of translating itself has
been compared to sex, or even rape. The translation, as well as the translator, is seen as the
female, and the source text (ST) as male, making the translation the adulterous wife or the
mistress, and the ST the husband (Chamberlain 93-69).
Gender can be an issue within a translation itself too. The translation of feminist texts
and the translation of texts by feminist translators have become the subject of discussions as
well. How should feminist texts be translated, and how do feminist translators treat their
source texts?
Mary Daly’s 1978 book Gyn/Ecology is such a feminist text that, apart from the issue
of gender, deals with another topic as well, namely that of language. Because of the fact that
it was published almost thirty years ago, one may ask whether it is at all relevant to look at
such a work, and to translate it, or look at how it could be translated. Daly, like many other
feminists, believes that language is sexist, and that this has even caused women to be in the
social position that they are in, in which they do not always receive the same rights as so
men, or are discriminated against, as in the case of women who do not get a job because they
are, for example, mothers. As such situations still occur nowadays, I feel that indeed it is
relevant to examine a text like Daly’s. Daly used language in such a way that it exposes the
patriarchal nature of language. She uses many new words or uses old words in new contexts
or with new meanings to achieve this. This often involves the use of wordplay. A clear
example in Daly’s work in which she exposes this patriarchal nature, is “stag-nation,” (6) in
which she connects the concept of stagnation (of female development) to men (“stags”). An
example of an existing word that she uses in a new sense, is “hag” (3), which is normally
seen and used as an insult to women, but which Daly “reclaims” and uses in a proud and
positive manner. Puns such as the above form a challenge to translators, as they are the
product of characteristics of a language which may not be present in the target language and
may cause the translator to have to look for another solution or to abandon the playful
element of the pun altogether.
In the following chapters, I will discuss the attitude of feminists towards language and
the views of feminism on translation, followed by an analysis of a specific feminist work in
which wordplay plays an important role, Mary Daly’s 1978 Gyn/Ecology, together with an
3
existing translation of this work (the German translation by Erika Wisselinck). I will then
proceed to discuss the problematic translational challenges that a translator can encounter in
such works, namely wordplay and neologisms. The final chapter will focus on the translation
of Daly’s Gyn/Ecology itself. It sets out with an analysis of the book in terms of its
translational difficulties, and is followed by an attempt to translate a few passages from the
book myself. This translation will involve comments upon the translation process (i.e. the
decisions that were made), to further examine the difficulties that a translator can come
across when translating wordplay in feminist literature.
4
2
Feminism and Language
The feminist movement has been making a case for equal treatment of women in all
spheres of life, and continues to do so. One of those areas is language. Anne Pauwes, in her
book on feminism and language, informs us that some (more radical) feminists think that
language is sexist, as men are often seen as the creators of meaning and of language rules (as
a result of their dominant role in for example literature) and as such impose their own world
view on language. Language, therefore, is gender-biased according to these feminists. The
fact that the masculine form is the norm in many structures, while the feminine form is a
marked form, is an example of such male-biased characteristics. For instance, the words
“waiter” versus “waitress” and the use of “man” and “he” as a generic form to refer to all
people, including women, show how masculine forms are often preferred. Sometimes,
language is even seen as the cause of women’s oppression. This view of language and gender
is based on the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which states that the way one
thinks is influenced, or determined, by the language one speaks.
In this view, patriarchal language (i.e. language from a male perspective) is incapable
of expressing a woman’s point of view and that is the reason that the feminists who support
this view have advocated language change. The goal they strive for is gender-neutral
language or the feminisation of language. They draw attention to the sexist nature of
language and show their rejection of it, while providing women with the (linguistic) means to
express themselves. Several techniques are used to achieve this. For instance, they make use
of neologisms, which are often derived from existing words, such as the well-known example
of “herstory” instead of “history”. The word “history” is analysed as being a compound noun
consisting of the words “his” and “story”. Other techniques involve wordplay (e.g.
“malestream” for “mainstream”) or graphemic experiments (e.g. italicising the element that
refers to the masculine in “herrlich”), or the hyphenation of words such as “stag-nation”,
giving existing words additional meanings. These are all examples of changes that occur at
word level only. Feminists who do not believe that changes at word level only are sufficient,
argue that, in order to create a language that is completely women-centred, changes at the
syntactic level should also take place.
Mary Daly is one of the feminists who believe that patriarchal language is the cause
that “women are silenced/split by the babble of grammatical use” (18) She advocates what
she calls “gynocentric writing”, as she believes that “the language and style of patriarchal
writing simply cannot contain or carry the energy of women’s exorcism and ecstasy”
(24).Wordplay has an important role in her gynocentric writing. The puns that are used in
5
Gyn/Ecology, amongst other techniques that she uses, serve to unmask the patriarchal nature
of language.
Daly agrees with the feminists who object to the use of the pronoun “he” and the
noun “man”. She even questions the use of the first person singular “I”, as it does not
disclose the identity (i.e. gender) of the speaker or writer, and can even make women feel
“deceptively […] at home in a male-controlled language” (18). Despite her objections against
the use of this pronoun, however, she does use the words “we” and “our”, of which the same
can be said be it that they are plural forms, to refer to women.
2.1
Feminism and Translation
Throughout the history of translation, the act of translation has often been discussed
in terms of fidelity. In many debates the quality of a translation is judged by its faithfulness
to its source text. This marriage metaphor for translation has resulted in terms such as the one
coined by Gilles Ménage, “les belles infidèles”. According to this metaphor, a translation is
the unfaithful female, a derivative and inferior form of the male source text. Feminist
translators seek to revise these sexist images that are sometimes associated with translation.
They oppose to patriarchal language and to the idea that the “paternity” of the source text is
in question, as translators have the ability to apply changes to their translation, thereby
obscuring its origin, and creating a “bastard” as its “offspring”. The purpose of feminist
translation is to draw attention to and to criticise this view of a translation and the act of
translation. This view is reflected in the fact that under American copyright law, for example,
translations are perceived to be a derivative work, and in the fact that book reviews hardly
pay any attention to the translation, even when the review clearly is based on a translation
rather than the original work itself. Feminist translators join the feminist writers in their
innovative use of language that seeks to undermine everyday, patriarchal language. They,
too, seek ways to give woman a voice, by inventing new words, spellings and grammatical
constructions.
There are several ways to make language, or texts, more women-friendly. The
processes of “neutralisation” and “desexisation”, as Susanne de Lotbinière-Harwood, a
Canadian feminist translator, calls them (117), rid the text of its patriarchal elements. These
processes refer to the use of gender-neutral words and the use of less sexist forms (e.g. using
“he/she” instead of the generic “he”) respectively. Many Germanic languages use suffixes
such as “-man” to refer to human agent nouns. Often the male form is also the gender neutral
form which can also be used to refer to women. In English, words such as chairman and
6
stewardess are often rendered as “chairperson” and “flight attendant”. In Dutch, however,
there are more feminine suffixes (“-a”, “-euse”, “-trice”, “-es”, “-in”, “-ster”) and they are
also more commonly used than in English, where most of them have been replaced by the
abovementioned gender-neutral forms, as a greater importance is attached to politically
correct language. Pauwes reports that even in Dutch the use of suffixes seems to decline, as
they are “seldom used in relation to new coinages” (47).
According to De Lotbinière-Harwood, neutralisation strategies in translation alone are
not enough. She thinks that neutralisation and desexisation are suited in certain contexts only,
such as translating non-fiction written by a man. She expresses her doubts about the
effectiveness of these strategies as they do not draw enough attention to the feminine and
thus preserve the current patriarchal language as well as ideas about the position of women in
society. She therefore says that “we need to resex language” (117) and that feminisation of
language and of texts/translations is needed for that. In order to do this, translators should use
strategies such as avoiding pejorative words designating women, encoding new
meaning in existing words and coining new words, often using etymology as a
resource. Words with the unhappy ending –ess and –ette are to be avoided when
designating women. As diminutives, they are pejorative. (117)
Pauwes calls this “to cause linguistic disruption” (98). This disruptive strategy is necessary
according to its supporters, as it shows their rejection of sexism. Luise von Flotow, a feminist
translator herself, distinguishes three main strategies in feminist translation: supplementing,
prefacing and footnoting, and what she describes as “hijacking”. Using footnotes or prefaces
to explain translational choices, too, is a widely used strategy outside of the practice of
feminist translation. Von Flotow sees this strategy, in which translators “have to turn the
critique of one language into the critique of another” (74), i.e. to adapt and apply the message
of the patriarchal nature of language (and the techniques to expose it) to the TL, as a way of
compensation for the differences between languages. The strategy of hijacking, a term which
von Flotow claims to have taken from a journalist who was critical of de LotbinièreHarwood’s translation of Lettres d”une autre by Lise Gauvin because of her interventionist
translation strategy, is a strategy which aims at the feminising of the target text. Within this
strategy there are several more specific substrategies, which would perhaps be more aptly
called “techniques.” These techniques involve the exploitation of for instance grammatical or
graphological properties.
The same strategies/techniques that are available to feminist writers to feminise the
text, of course, are available to feminist translators or translators of feminist writings as well.
7
One of those strategies is to challenge grammatical gender. Although it can be argued that
grammatical rules concerning gender are simply a matter of convention, they can also be
used to draw attention to the unequal treatment of men and women. Because of the fact that
grammatical gender-marking is conceived as a convention which is hardly ever questioned or
criticised, they make for a perfect tool to show how in society, too, gender differences are not
always questioned, as the challenging or even ungrammatical translations take on a symbolic
meaning. One can challenge grammatical gender in a variety of ways, using different
techniques and exploiting different grammatical features of a language.
Louky Bersianik challenges the “misogyny of our society and its languages” (Simon
17) in her novel L”Eugelionne. In a passage on abortion, for instance, she adds the feminine
ending “-e” to the word “puni” in “Le ou la coupable doit être punie”. This technique
emphasises that the woman is always the one that is perceived as being guilty of and should
be punished for abortion. Howard Scott, who translated the novel into English, came up with
the translation “The guilty one must be punished… whether she’s a man or a woman!”
English is a language with “natural” gender, i.e. the gender of nouns depends on their
meaning rather than their form. Scott was not able to use a feminine noun or adjective in his
translation because of this, but he was able to use another grammatical feature which is able
to indicate gender: the unexpected use of the feminine pronoun “she”. This allowed him to
create a construction with a similar effect as the source text.
Another example of a translational difficulty in a feminist book upon which Sherry
Simon reports is when Bersianik, in another of her works, asks her readers what the feminine
form of the French word “garçon” (boy) is. The answer to this question that she herself
provides is “garce”, which originally indeed meant “girl”. This is however no longer its
meaning. Nowadays it has taken on the degrading meaning of “slut” or “whore”. Susanne de
Lotbinière-Harwood, who translated the text into English, explains that “the same kind of
sexual slippage has occurred in English” (de Lotbinière-Harwood 118). She could not rely on
masculine and feminine forms of the same noun in English, as was the case in French (with
“garcon” and “grace”), because “boy” and “girl” have different etymological roots. She
therefore came up with the “obvious equivalent” as she herself calls it:
“What is the
feminine of dog? It’s bitch!” (Simon 21).
De Lotbinière-Harwood goes even further in her defiance of grammatical rules, as she
also uses the pronoun “she” instead of “it” to refer to the noun “dawn”, because the French
word in the source text, “aube”, is a feminine noun. In a line from Nicole Brossard’s Sous la
Langue, the first few words end in “-elle”:
8
Fricatelle ruiselle essentielle aime-t-elle dans le touche a tout qui arrondit les seins la
rondeur douce des bouches ou l’effet qui la déshabille? (De Lotbinière-Harwood qtd.
in von Flotow, Translation and Gender 23)
In her translation of this line, de Lotbinière-Harwood uses the pronoun “she” in a way which
renders the text ungrammatical, but manages to preserve the emphasis on the feminine of the
source text. Her translation is as follows:
Does she frictional she fluvial she essential does she in the all-embracing touch that
rounds the breasts love the mouths” soft roundness or the effect undressing her? (De
Lotbinière-Harwood qtd. in von Flotow, Translation and Gender 23)
Feminist translators may also choose to use feminine grammatical features in their
translations, even if they are not used in the source text. De Lotbinière-Harwood, for
example, is such an “assertive, interventionist” translator (von Flotow Translation and
Gender 28), who gives the text a feminine identity where there was none in the source text.
In the preface to her translation of Lettres dune autre by Lise Gauvin, a fellow feminist, she
points out that Gauvin writes in the generic masculine, but that she chose to make “language
speak for women, and therefore used every opportunity to make the feminine visible in her
translation. For the French word “Québécois”, for instance, she uses the translation
“Québécois-e-s”, adding the feminine suffix in order to emphasise that women live in
Québec too, contrary to what the (masculine) generic form seems to suggest.
Another category in translation strategies that feminine translators can use concerns
typography. This is a strategy that De Lotbinière-Harwood uses as well. In her translation
“HuMan Rights and Men’s Rights” for “Droit de l”Homme et Droits des homes”, the
capitalised M in “HuMan” draws attention to the fact that the word “human” contains the
word “man” and that women do not seem to be included in it and that “man” alone makes up
humankind. Other examples are where for example a bold face is used to emphasise the
feminine aspect of a word. In the French source text, its author Michèle Causse used an e
muet (the silent “s” at the end of a word to indicate the feminine form) to feminise her text. In
the sentence “Nulle ne l”ignore, tout est langue”, “nulle” is the feminine form of “no one”. In
English this word does not mark gender. De Lotbinière-Harwood came up with a creative
solution; she used a bold e in “one” to indicate the foregrounding of gender that was present
in the source text (Simon 21).
A third strategy of feminist (translation) strategies is to use wordplay, often by
forming new words out of existing ones. It can be extremely difficult to translate these puns,
as will become apparent from the next chapter, but sometimes it is possible, as the German
9
translation of the title of Mary Daly’s Gyn-Ecology, “Gyn/Ökologie” shows us. Barbara
Godard gives us an example of a creative solution for the translation of the title of a book by
Nicole Brossard, L’Amer, which is a pun on “mère” (mother), “mer” (sea) and “amer”
(bitter). Godard centres her translation “These our Mothers” around a large S, cleverly
creating the phrases “these our mothers”, “the sour mothers” and “these sour smothers”
(Simon 14).
Examples like these show that what translators have to rely on most of all is their
creativity and that they have to “go beyond translation to supplement their work” (von
Flotow, Translation and Gender 24).
2.2
Mary Daly and Gyn/Ecology
Mary Daly is an American theologian and radical feminist writer who also believes
that the patriarchal nature of language is related to the position of women in society. In her
writings, Daly attempts to deconstruct conventional language in order to show this. In
Gyn/Ecology, she describes how women have been silenced by a patriarchal culture, in which
they have come to believe that male-written texts are true. Women therefore need to “spring
into life, speech, action” (Daly 21). They need to become writers themselves, but they cannot
use patriarchal language and therefore need to “invent, dis-cover, re-member” (24). This is
exactly what Daly herself does in Gyn/Ecology. She uses several techniques to give women a
voice and to challenge patriarchal language. For example, she uses words that would
normally be considered to be offensive to women, such as “hag” and “crone”, to refer to
women who undertake the feminist journey and attaches positive images of strong and
independent women to them. By doing this, she reclaims these words and gives them a more
positive meaning.
Daly agrees with the feminists who object to the use of the pronoun “he” and the
noun “man”. She even questions the use of the first person singular “I”, as it does not
disclose the identity (i.e. gender) of the speaker or writer, and can even make women feel
“deceptively […] at home in a male-controlled language” (8). Despite her objections against
the use of this pronoun, however, she does use the words “we” and “our”, of which the same
can be said be it that they are plural forms, to refer to women.
Her use of the above-mentioned pronouns “we” and “our” presents another feature of
her style. She uses it in a way that would be considered ungrammatical in normal usage, for
example in sentences such as “Spinsters can find our way back to reality […]” (4), where
“our” instead of “their” is used to refer to “Spinsters”. She does this, she says, because it is “a
10
means of realizing my identification with, or separation from, certain roles and behaviours”
(25). The capitalisation of certain nouns, too, depends on the extent to which she can identify
with the concept in question. Thus, for example, “Self is capitalized when I am referring to
the authentic center of women’s process, while the imposed/internalized false “self,” the shell
of the Self, is in lower case” (26).
Daly clearly has her own style, and does not agree with all feminists, as becomes
clear from her statement that she uses “they” rather than “we” to refer to those women. With
respect to language, she does not always agree with developments in the language or
techniques that are invented (by feminists) and used to make language less patriarchal. She
rejects the use of gender-neutral words such as “chairperson”, and expresses her disapproval
of the word “herstory”, that is meant to replace “history,” which according to some feminists
implies that history is the result of men’s achievements.
The main strategy that she employs to achieve her goal, however, is the use of
wordplay. She invents words such as “hag-ography” and “Gynocide”, and adds or lays bare
(new) meanings to words such as “dis-ease” and “re-cover” by using hyphens which draw
attention to additional meanings. In the preface to Gyn/Ecology, Daly warns her readers that
[t]his book contains Big Words, even Bigger than Beyond God the Father, for it is
written for big, strong women, out of respect for strength. Moreover, I”ve made some
of them up. Therefore, it may be a stumbling block both to those who choose
downward mobility of the mind and therefore hate Big Words, and to those who
choose upward mobility and therefore hate New/Old Words, that is, Old Words that
become New when their ancient (“obsolete”) gynocentric meanings are unearthed
(xiv).
These “Big Words” are not only a stumbling block to non-supporters of Daly’s theories, but
also for the translators of the book, as the wordplay that it contains is often difficult, or even
impossible, to translate, as becomes apparent from its German translation for example.
In her 1997 article, Luise von Flotow discusses the German translation of Mary
Daly’s Gyn/Ecology in the light of its translational problems to do with punning. She sets out
by stating that while wordplay is used in German feminist writing, other strategies are used
more predominately. One of the feminists who do use wordplay in their writing is Luise
Pusch. She also published a critique of the German version of the book, which von Flotow
uses in her discussion of the translation.
The German translator of the book, Erika Wisselinck, refers to the difficulty of the
task of translating the wordplay that is present in the source text. Pusch’s main point of
critique is that the excessive use of translator’s notes to accompany the many puns that were
11
deemed “untranslatable” made the translation extremely difficult to read. The title of her
critique therefore is “Mary, please don”t pun-ish us anymore!” (von Flotow, “Mutual Punishment” 52). According to Pusch and von Flotow, one of the reasons that the German
translation does not “work” is that the number of puns in the source text is excessive and
becomes “indigestible in translation” (von Flotow, “Mutual Pun-ishment” 54). Another
reason may have to do with the fact that Wisselinck seemed to feel daunted by the source text
and perhaps even inadequate at fulfilling her task, as von Flotow observes that Wisselinck
places greater emphasis on the difficulties that the puns presented her rather than the fun and
on the “inadequacies of her solution” (von Flotow, “Mutual Pun-ishment” 59). A third reason
that is mentioned is the function that Wisselinck ascribes to the translation. According to
Pusch and von Flotow, the translation was given an educational function, serving to
popularise feminism in Germany, whereas the source text did not necessarily have that
function ” (von Flotow, “Mutual Pun-ishment” 64).
Wisselinck describes three strategies for translating feminist wordplay in her preface.
Her first strategy is to find related and appropriate German puns. This can, however, result in
a translation that is rather free. The second strategy is to translate the literal surface meaning
of the pun only, which results in a text that is faithful to the text’s meaning, but it also rids
the text of its playfulness, a powerful tool in conveying Daly’s feminist views. Her third
strategy is to explain certain puns that she thinks are “impressive” (“eindruckvolle
Wortspiele”) in footnotes. Unfortunately, because of the fact that puns are dependent on
language-specific features, finding appropriate German puns, or puns in any language for that
matter, is difficult. For this reason, Wisselinck resorted to using footnotes, even in
combination with her strategy of translating the surface meaning. Von Flotow points out that
the wordplay that is present in Mary Daly’s work is turned into wordlabour in the German
translation (von Flotow, “Mutual Pun-ishment” 57).
One of the translations of puns that von Flotow discusses in her article, is when Daly
explains that she does not approve of the feminist term “herstory”, meaning “women’s
history”. Wisselinck explains this pun to her audience by pointing out that often products
such as glasses, towels and place mats are given His and Hers labels, and that the word
“herstory” is derived from this practice. According to von Flotow, such an explanation, using
“such lowly domestic items” (von Flotow, “Mutual Pun-ishment” 60) trivialises the issue.
The explanations of the puns are not only tedious, but sometimes they are simply
incorrect as well. This is the case in the translation of the hyphenated word “re-cover”, where
she claims that “recover” is the English word for “entdecken”. This word, however, means
“discover”. Von Flotow wonders why such trivial or even contradictory points are given such
12
long explanations, while other puns such as “ludic cerebration” which are more important
and “loaded” have only their surface meaning translated. She feels that the tedious footnotes
from which the translators difficulty to translate the wordplay is so painfully apparent, do
“more to alienate than “educate” the readers” (von Flotow, “Mutual Pun-ishment” 59).
13
3
Translational Difficulties
Cross-linguistic and cross-cultural translation can be a challenging task, as the target
culture readers might not be familiar with certain culture specific items from the source
culture, or as linguistic structures from the ST might not have a readily available equivalent
in the TL. This chapter will deal with the latter category of translational difficulties that are
present in Daly’s Gyn/Ecology, namely the puns and neologisms that she uses, and that, due
to their language-specific characteristics, can be difficult to translate.
3.1
Puns
In her introduction, Daly sets the tone for the rest of her book. She begins by
explaining that she used the word “roughly”, in relation to the journey that women have to
set out upon, by way of a pun (referring to its senses of both “approximately” and
“difficult”).
Puns are often seen as a form of humour, although Daly does not use wordplay with
that effect in mind in her book. Humour is a phenomenon that appears to be present in all
cultures, and the same can be said of wordplay, be it that different languages use it to a
different extent. This universality, however, is deceptive, as the use (i.e. the extent to which
and also the context in which it is used) can vary across languages and cultures. This causes
problems for the translator, who now often has to choose between preserving the meaning of
the source text (ST) or trying to recreate its effect in the target text (TT).
An even more challenging task is the translation of wordplay, or puns. Dirk
Delabastita defines wordplay as follows:
Wordplay is the general name for the various textual phenomena in which structural
features of the language(s) used are exploited in order to bring about a
communicatively significant confrontation of two (or more) linguistic structures with
more or less similar forms and more or less different meanings. (Delabastita 1996:
128)
A pun uses formal similarity (phonological, graphological) to activate different
meanings. Four different types of wordplay can be discerned: homonymy (where spelling and
sound are identical), homophony (where different spellings are used, but the sounds are the
same), homography (where words with identical spellings have different sounds and
meanings) and paronymy (where there are differences in both spelling and sound). When the
two formally similar words that together form a pun occur in the same portion of text, this is
called horizontal wordplay. When the pun relies on associations solely and both semantic
14
elements are therefore present in the same linguistic item, this is called vertical wordplay
(Delabastita, Introduction 128).
Apart from these four basic forms of wordplay, there are other, more specific
linguistic features that can be exploited when creating wordplay. For example, pun can also
be based on lexical information. This is when a component of an idiom is not read using its
normal, metaphorical sense only, but using its literal meaning as well. Delabastita gives
“Britain going metric: give them an inch and they”ll take our mile” (Introduction 130) as an
example. Here, the expression “give him an inch and he”ll take a mile” is parodied. Instead
of the sense of giving people the opportunity to do something and having them abuse this
opportunity, the literal senses of “inch” and “mile” are used here, to indicate that the
willingness of the British to switch to the metric system will cause them to be “robbed” of
their mile.
Morphology is another feature that can be exploited. This is when a word is not, or no
longer, analysed as a compound, as in ““I can”t find the oranges,” Tom said fruitlessly” ,
where “fruitlessly” is not so much used in its normal sense “in vain”, but hints at the fact that
Tom cannot find his oranges and as such is “fruitless” (without fruit). In this respect it is
similar to puns based on idioms, where the pun takes advantage of the fact that the idiom (in
every day language) has lost its original, literal meaning (Introduction 130).
Finally, syntax can be a feature involved in wordplay. When different word types,
such as nouns and verbs, have the same form but different functions within a sentence, as is
often the casein English, this can cause a sentence to be analysed in more than one way, as
we can see in, for example, “Players please”. “Players” is a brand of cigarettes. These two
words can therefore be interpreted as a request (if “please” is read as an interjection) or as a
statement in an advertisement to praise the brand (if “please” is read as a verb) (Introduction
131).
When faced with wordplay, the translator has several strategies at his or her disposal
in the task of translating the instance of wordplay. The first task of the translator, however, is
to establish whether the pun is actually intended to be one and if it needs to be translated as
such. It could of course be the case that the pun that the translator encounters in the source
text was not deliberately created and is nothing but a mere ambiguity in the text. Newspaper
headlines, for example, often use wordplay to capture the reader’s attention, but the
ambiguity in the following headlines, cited by Steven Pinker can be said to be unintentional:
Stiff Opposition Expected to Casketless Funeral Plan
Drunk gets Nine Months in Violin Case
Iraqi Head Seeks Arms (79)
15
Functions
While a pun will often be seen as a subtype of humour, and while creating humour is
often what a pun aims at, there are many more functions that a writer could have in mind
when creating one. Delabastita provides us with a list of the possible functions wordplay can
have. He starts out by explaining that puns used in newspaper articles (i.e. their headlines)
and in advertising often draw the reader’s attention to either the article or the ad. He further
adds “strengthening semantic coherence, building allusive networks, providing storyline
pivots, coining meaningful character names, individualizing characters, creating dramatic
irony, supporting allegorical reading, propelling witty dialogue, adding persuasive force,
bypassing social taboo [and] undermining rational logic” (Delabastita, “Wordplay” 872) and
states that puns often have more than one function. He also points out how important it is for
translators (as well as for translation scholars) to distinguish the exact functions of a ST pun.
In the case of Mary Daly’s Gyn/Ecology, a few functions listed here apply: adding
persuasive force and bypassing social taboo, as well as strengthening semantic coherence are
the three most important ones. What Mary Daly is trying to achieve through her book, after
all, is to inform her readers of her theories and to convince them that indeed language is
sexist and needs to be changed so that it can speak for women as well. The wordplay in
Gyn/Ecology forms an important element in her argument that serves to deconstruct language
by pointing out hidden meanings or by adding meanings to words, and to demonstrate to her
readers in what way language and society (for language is a reflection of the society it was
created in) are gender-biased. The word “stag-nation” is a good example of this. Mary Daly
manages to connect the words “stag” and “nation” to the word “stagnation” by inserting a
hyphen between the two parts. A stag is a male deer, and “stagnation” therefore refers to a
nation of males, a patriarchal society. The journey of women towards the “discovery and
creation of a world other than patriarchy” (Daly 1), according to Daly, stagnates because of
men and patriarchal thinking. Thus, Daly’s wordplay is an important persuasive factor. The
wordplay bypasses social taboos, as women often do not get the same right as men.
Furthermore, this unequal status is often unchallenged, especially in the area of linguistics,
where the sexist nature of language is simply accepted as a convention. Her wordplay serves
to reveal this nature and to challenge it. Daly also heavily relies on semantic coherence in her
book. The wordplay she uses is part of a system of (interrelated) allusions and connotations.
She keeps referring back to previous passages in her book by reusing terms. These terms are
used in different contexts and different connotations or even senses are created. According to
Luise von Flotow, “Daly’s wordplay works on several levels” (von Flotow, “Mutual Punishment” 60). It does not only evoke immediate associations “[b]ut it is multiply effective
16
because of the rhetorical techniques she uses, constantly varying a term and recycling it in
different contexts, creating a rippling affect by continually making new associations, and so
demonstrating her premise that language, culture, society […] are part of a vast enmeshed
network” (von Flotow, “Mutual Pun-ishment” 60). This network of puns that have different
connotations in different contexts works to support and strengthen her point of view. It also
makes the task of the translator more complicated.
A variety of translation strategies is available to translators who encounter wordplay
in the ST. In La Traduction des Jeux de Mots (2003), Jacqueline Henry distinguishes three
main types of translation strategies : traduction isomorphe (where the ST pun can be
rendered in the TT language without the loss of any semantic content or formal properties,
i.e. the type of pun that is used), traduction homomorphe (where the ST pun is translated
using the same type of wordplay, but different semantic content) and traduction
hétéromorphe (where the ST pun’s semantic content is preserved, but not its form), To these
three strategies, she adds traduction libre (free translation). This is a rather broad
categorisation of translation strategies. Dirk Delabastita provides us with a more elaborate
list of eight “basic” options, which in turn can be divided into several different subtypes
(Delabastita, Introduction 134):
1)
PUN > PUN
This strategy involves translating the ST pun with a pun in the TT. It is not
necessarily the case that the TT pun has the same properties at the ST pun.
More often than not, it will be different from the ST pun in either its form,
demantic content, Textual effect, or its contextual setting.
2)
PUN > NON-PUN
The ST pun becomes a phrase in the TT that may contain both intended senses
of the pun, or only one of its senses, i.e. the one that is deemed most important
in the context.
3)
PUN > Related Rhetorical Device
This strategy replaces the pun with a different rhetorical device, such as
repetition, alliteration or rhyme, that aims at creating the same effect as the ST
pun.
4)
PUN > ZERO
The pun is not only not translated, it is simply omitted together with its
context.
5)
PUN ST = PUN TT
In this case the translator is able to reproduce the ST pun without any changes
17
to its form and semantic content.
6)
NON-PUN > PUN
A pun is used to translate ST material that does not contain any instances of
wordplay. This strategy compensates for any instances of loss of ST puns
elsewhere in the TT.
7)
ZERO > PUN
This strategy too, is a form of compensation. It is different from strategy (6) in
that it adds totally new material to the text that contains wordplay.
8)
Editorial Techniques
This strategy can be used when a ST pun cannot be translated (in its entirety)
and the translator wants to explain the ST pun to the reader through the use of
footnotes.
Of course, it is not simply the case that the translator selects one of these eight options.
Rather, the chosen solution will often be a combination of these strategies.
Frank Heibert (1993) compiled a much more comprehensive list of the strategies a
translator can use. This list, which he has created based on and using examples from James
Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake and several of its translations (in German, French, Spanish, Italian
and Portuguese). His list is more elaborate that that of Delabastita, because he uses the
different features or properties that a pun can have, Inhalt (content), Technik (technique) and
Stil (style), to distinguish between different types of wordplay, whereas Delabastita includes
several of what by Heibert’s definition would be separate strategies, in broader (categories
of) translation strategies. Heibert also includes strategies such as Unverständlich
(incomprehensible) for instances where he was not able to discover on what ground the
translator of one of the texts that Heibert used in his analysis used a particular translation for
a ST pun, and strategies where the translator adapts the ST pun material using either target
language properties or source language properties. Heibert does not include all of
Delabastita’s strategies, however. The strategy of adding new material containing a pun, by
way of compensation (7), for example, cannot be found in Heibert’s list.
Translatability
Because puns depend on the structural features of a language, and because different
languages have different structures, the task of translating wordplay may be, and sometimes
is, considered to be an impossible one. On the other hand, the fact that translations of texts in
which puns are present or even texts that are interspersed with them exist, shows that it is
indeed possible to translate such texts.
18
Despite all of the different strategies that a translator has at his or her disposal, a
translation in which all of the properties of the ST pun are present is hard to come up with.
Often the TT translation of the pun will involve considerable translation shifts. It is difficult
to find an equivalent translation, and it has therefore been claimed that wordplay is
untranslatable. How the translatability of a text (or of wordplay in this case) is perceived,
however, depends on one’s definition of equivalence. Jeremy Muday’s Introducing
Translation Studies, lists several translation scholars who have discussed the issue of
equivalence in translation, and came up with different types of equivalence (41-50). Eugene
Nida distinguishes two types of equivalence: formal equivalence (where both the form and
the content of the ST message should be transferred to its TT equivalent) and dynamic
equivalence (which focuses on equivalence of the effect of the message rather than its form
or content). Werner Koller distinguishes five different types of equivalence:
1)
Denotative equivalence (equivalence of the extralinguistic content)
2)
Connotative equivalence (equivalence of the lexical items)
3)
Text-normative equivalence (equivalence of text-type properties)
4)
Pragmatic equivalence (equivalence of the communicative effect)
5)
Formal equivalence (unlike Nida’s use of this term, Koller’s formal
equivalence is equivalence of the actual form and the aesthetic qualities of a
text)
A translator, then, has to choose between these different types of equivalence. This
choice depends on more factors than the translator’s preference only. For example, target
culture norms will influence his or her decision to a great extent as well. In the case of
wordplay, we can for instance say that English is a language in which the use of puns is a
more commonly accepted phenomenon than in Dutch. However, Delabastita remarks that
“such broad generalizations are to be treated with caution” (“Wordplay” 873) and that it is
more important to look at whether or not wordplay is tolerated in a certain genre or text-type.
Other factors that might have an effect on the translator’s decision are time, and by extension
also money (as time equals money). Time pressure may cause the translator to choose the
first translation that comes to mind that seems a reasonable solution, instead of exploring
other possibilities.
Setting aside the factors of time and money, and assuming that the translator has all
the time and freedom that he or she needs when writing a translation of Mary Daly’s
Gyn/Ecology, s/he will have to keep in mind the topic of the book and the functions that the
wordplay in it fulfils in the goal that Daly is trying to achieve. The translator also needs to be
aware of the fact that the wordplay in the book forms a network of interrelated words (and
19
meanings). Delabastita reports how “[i]t is often assumed that the translatability of wordplay
ultimately depends on the possibility of divorcing textual means (which may be highly
language-specific in the case of wordplay) from textual functions (which can be reproduced
e.g. by means of compensatory strategies)” (“Wordplay” 872). If however, wordplay is as
interwoven into the context as is the case in Gyn/Ecology, it becomes increasingly difficult
for the translator to separate those two elements. The topic of the book also contributes to the
problems that a translator will encounter, as both semantics and form (i.e. the fact that Daly
chose to use this many puns to support her theory) are important elements in her argument.
The meaning of the words she chose of course form the basis of her discussion, as they
represent exactly the point she is trying to convey to her readers. The presence of wordplay is
important as it serves to illustrate and strengthen this point. As it is difficult and often
impossible to transfer all aspects of the ST pun to the TT, the translator is placed in a
dilemma and is forced to abandon one or more features of the ST pun. Daly’s pun “re-cover”
(Daly 24), is an example of such a dilemma. A variation of this pun, “dis-cover” (xiii), a pun
which refers to both “discover” and “uncover”, can be translated into Dutch by the relatively
straightforward “ont-dekken”, which refers to recovering of a disease for example, winning
back a status similar to that of men, and, spelled with a hyphen, it also means “to cover
again”. “Dis-cover”, however, does not allow for such a straightforward translation, as the
Dutch translations for these senses do not have the same or similar roots, and as such it
presents a problem to the translator.
“Crone-ology” (16) is another such pun which is difficult to translate. It sounds like
“chronology” and is supposed to mean something like “the chronological order of events in
the history of women (crones).” Because “crone” cannot be translated into Dutch by a word
that has an identical pronunciation as the first part of the word “chronologie”, the translator
will be forced to either find a different solution with a similar playful effect, or to translate
only one of its senses (the surface meaning).This compromise that the translator has to make
will result in being unfaithful to the text, or, as Delabastita expresses it, “the only way to be
faithful to the original text (i.e. to its verbal playfulness) is paradoxically to be unfaithful to it
(i.e. to its vocabulary and grammar)” (Introduction 135).
Fortunately, there are also factors that can make the translation of wordplay
considerably easier. When the languages in question are closely related, for example, this
will mean that the languages have more characteristics in common and that increases the
chance that a ST pun can indeed be translated by an equivalent target text pun. A language
pair that is not as closely related, or not related at all, will prove to be more difficult.
Delabastita mentions how puns based on sound similarity especially, “can sometimes be
20
copied or approximated if the translation involves two historically close languages”
(“Wordplay as a Translation Problem” 605). Since English and Dutch are relatively closely
related languages, as both are part of the language family of Germanic languages, this may
be an advantage in the translation of the wordplay that is present in Mary Daly’s
Gyn/Ecology into Dutch. Similarly, if the pun involves borrowings from a third language,
such as Latin or Greek, this will also make it easier to reproduce the ST pun. The relatedness
of the language pair is not the only factor that can facilitate the translator’s task. According to
Delabastita, puns based on polysemy, can often be translated fairly easily, even between
remote languages, as the multiple meanings that a word can have are the result of
extralinguistic factors. He gives the example of a pun using the verb “to betray”, in which
different senses of the verb are used (“to betray one’s feelings” and “to betray one’s country”
respectively).
3.2
Neologisms
Daly considers many of the words she uses in her book to be new ones, although they
are often based on existing words. Indeed, puns can be seen as neologisms. After all, they are
newly coined words that are not in the dictionary, and neologisms and puns can be said to
have overlapping characteristics. Both take several meanings and (most of the time, at least)
combine them in one textual unit. Unlike the previously mentioned types of puns, however,
neologisms do not make use of the multiple meanings of one word or of words with similar
forms, but take different words or elements of words and blend them into one new word (that
is, if the neologism is based on existing words, as is the case in Daly’s Gyn/Ecology). Puns
therefore have several layers of meaning (i.e. at the surface level, but also at a deeper, more
metaphorical level), while neologisms (when strictly separated from puns) have only one
layer. Examples of such neologisms are “hag-ocracy” (15) and “robotitude” (53). Delabastita
distinguishes seven types of neologisms, new words involving: borrowing; a semantic or
grammatical shift (of an existing word); a combination of existing words (both derivations
and compounds); new coinages that are not based on existing words); (onomatopoeic)
imitation; blending of words; and abbreviations (Delabastita, “Archaisms and Neologisms”
884). The three types of neologisms from this list that are present in Daly’s book, are
combining old words to create new ones, blending existing words, and words that undergo
semantic shifts. The latter of these seems to be used most frequently. Daly often uses the
technique of inserting a hyphen in words with affixes, to expose or add hidden or new
meanings to a word, such as the previously mentioned “re-cover”. I have used a stricter
21
definition of neologism than that employed by Delabastita, and have taken neologisms that
have multiple layers of meaning to be puns, and have therefore discussed them as such in the
above.
Delabastita mentions four possible translation strategies for neologisms: using a direct
copy of the ST neologism (for example, using inverted commas, or applying phonological or
graphological changes); using an existing target language (TL) neologism; using an existing
TL expression with equivalent meaning that is not a neologism; and using a (different)
linguistic device to compensate for the neologistic style of the text in a different textual
position.
Mary Daly’s one-dimensional neologisms should not present as difficult a translation
problem as do the puns that are present in Gyn/Ecology. They can form a challenge to the
translator nevertheless. It will often seem like a matter of adjusting the prefixes or suffixes to
the TL. For example, in “robotitude”, where “-itude” is a suffix in many existing nouns in
English that can be attached to other words to create a new noun. In Dutch, the target
language, an equivalent suffix, such as “-schap” or “-heid” can be used to create a similar
word. This then, would seem to be a rather straightforward translation, but given the fact that
Daly mentions how she has based this neologism on a word with the same suffix coined by
Françoise d”Eaubonne (feminitude), it might prove to be more difficult than one would at
first think.
22
4
Translation of Gyn/Ecology
This chapter will discuss some passages from Mary Daly’s book, and will include an
attempt to translate these passages, in order to examine the (un)translatability of the
wordplay, and how feminist writing can be translated.
Mary Daly’s books are known for their criticism of male-dominated society.
Gyn/Ecology, too, is a book in which Daly questions certain practices throughout the world
(and history). The book is divided into three so-called passages. In the first passage, Daly
focuses on the presence of patriarchy around the world, comparing it to religions, or even
sects: “Patriarchy is itself the prevailing religion of the entire planet. […] All of the so-called
religions legitimating patriarchy are mere sects subsumed under its vast umbrella/canopy”
(Daly 1978: 39). She sets out by explaining one of her main themes, i.e. how the patriarchal
nature of language has caused women to be in an oppressed position in real life as well. In
the second passage, Daly discusses the different ways in which women have become the
victims of patriarchy. She gives examples of those practices or rituals that are the result (and
proof) of “the murder/dismemberment of the Goddess — that is, the Self-affirming be-ing of
women” (Daly 1978: 111). These rituals include Indian suttee (widow burning), footbinding
and female genital mutilation, but also western rituals such as, witch burning and American
gynaecology. These rituals rob women of their personhood; Daly calls this “Goddess
murder”. Apart from describing the atrocities themselves, she also attempts to unmask the
scholars who dismiss these crimes against women as their own fault. She does this by
analysing the writings of these “scholars of patriarchy” (Daly 1978: 112).
The theme of patriarchal language is present throughout the book, through Daly’s use
of innovative language, which she employs to point out this patriarchal nature of language to
her readers (and thus strengthen her argument) and to deconstruct it and give women a voice.
The main techniques that she uses to achieve this, are the use of wordplay and neologisms.
Daly exploits the various meanings that a word can have (as in “pinning her down with a
double cross”, p. 54) or adds meanings to words that were not previously there by inserting a
hyphen and reveal two other existing words that “shed new light” on existing words, such as
the previously discussed example of “stag-nation” (p. 6). She also uses the phonetic
similarity of words, as in the case of “ceilings/sealings (p. 55).
These puns all are neologisms at the same time. Daly even refers to them as new
words in her Index of new words, albeit that they are “not new in the old sense, [but] new in a
new sense, because they are heard in a new way” (p. 469). She also uses non-punning new
23
words, however, such as “robotitude” (p. 53) and “Hag-ocracy” (p. 3).
Another stylistic feature that Daly uses is alliteration. By using words that start with
the same letter, such as “Male Maze” (p. 2), she creates powerful expressions that strengthen
her argument.
All of these techniques present the translator with a challenge. The interwoven nature
of the words that Daly uses makes this an even bigger challenge, as (punning) words are used
in (several) different contexts and with different meanings and/or connotations. It is
important for the translator to keep track of the different contexts and senses that words are
used in, in order to avoid having to go back to passages and apply changes.
Apart from the main, and most obvious, translational problem or challenge, wordplay,
there are other stylistic aspects to Daly’s work that can be quite challenging to a translator.
One of these additional challenges is her use of complex sentences. Her sentences are often
very long and contain many subordinate clauses and attributive or adverbial adjunct. Such
sentences can result in confusing constructions in the (Dutch) translation, because of the fact
that the languages have different word orders. This makes it very difficult sometimes to use
all of the elements in the ST sentence in a TT sentence, as, for example, the object and finite
verb may end up being separated by such a large amount of words, that it has a negative
effect on the readability of the text. The translator is thus forced to change the structure of the
sentence, or perhaps change the voice of the sentence (for instance from an active
construction to a passive one).
Many of Daly’s sentences contain a form of the verb “to be”. This is a verb that can
be used in many contexts. In Dutch, in certain contexts, a more specific verb is often used
instead of “zijn” (to be), for example, “vormen” (to form), “inhouden” (to imply) or
“betekenen” (to mean). This may also mean, as is the case in the latter two examples, that a
construction using the conjunction “dat” (that) is needed. An example where I decided to use
such a construction in order to prevent creating a rather “vague” Dutch sentence, is “De Reis
houdt in dat de geïnternaliseerde Peetvader in zijn verschillende hoedanigheden (zijn naam is
legio) moet worden uitgedreven” for “The Journey, then, involves exorcism of the internalized
Godfather in his various manifestations (his name is legion).”
Daly also uses many instances of the gerund. She often takes a verb and uses it as a
noun by adding “-ing” to the stem. This is especially the case in the first fragment that I
selected for my translation, in which Daly writes about what the journey of women should
look like, and describes it using phrases such as “breaking through the Male Maze is […]”
and “it is spinning through and beyond the father’s foreground”. Dutch does not normally use
the gerund to the extent that English does. For this reason, in many of the instances, the
24
translator is forced to use a different construction, involving, for instance, the use of a
conjugation or by inserting/changing the object and finite verb. The abovementioned phrase
“breaking through the Male Maze is […]”, I have, for example, made more explicit by
inserting “we” as the subject of the sentence: “Als we door deze Mannelijke Dwaasheid heen
breken, is dat […]”.
In the preface to her book, Daly mentions how she thinks it can be described as an
anti-intellectual and anti-academic work. To this she adds that the “pedantic can be expected
to perceive it as scholarly”, as it goes against prevailing views and “confronts old
molds/models of question-asking by being itself an Other way of thinking/speaking” (Daly
1978: xiii). Yet, the book is presented as a scholarly one. Firstly, it is written by an academic
(Daly holds degrees in theology and philosophy. She uses quotes from other writers (such as
Simone de Beauvoir) to support her arguments and she uses footnotes as explanatory devices,
to give extra information, or to refer to other literature. For example, she justifies her use of
the word “Crone”, which is normally perceived to be a deprecating term but which Daly uses
in a way that gives it positive connotations, in a footnote in which she discusses the possible
etymological roots for the word according to the Oxford English Dictionary and MerriamWebster. The etymological explanation that Merriam-Webster gives is the Greek word
chronios (long-lasting), and according to Daly that is what Crones are. Daly uses many more
footnotes like this one, in which she explains her use of words, gives extra information or
refers to other literature. It seems likely therefore that her audience was (and is) (an
academically) educated audience. By extension, her audience will have included people with
an interest in feminism.
The book was first published in 1978, which is almost thirty years ago now. Much
has changed since, and the feminist issue may not be as relevant anymore as it was back then.
This does not mean, however, that it has completely lost its relevance. On the contrary, there
are still many issues throughout the world in which women are discriminated against or seen
as inferior to men, and that need to be addressed.
For this reason, my translation will have the same function and a similar (be it a
Dutch) target audience as Daly’s work. In its form, too, it will be the same as Gyn/Ecology,
i.e. an “academic” work with footnotes and references to other (feminist) literature).
Although Daly focuses on the sexist nature of the English language in her wordplay, it is of
course a universal example that Daly writes about. I therefore included wordplay in other
instances as well, such as in words like “man-ifestaties” and “ge-man-ipuleerd”. I agree with
Von Flotow and Push’s criticism of the German translation of Gyn/Ecology, when they say
25
that a great number of footnotes makes the text difficult to read and can even damage
persuasiveness of the text as a result. For this reason, I chose not to use any “translator’s
notes” to explain the source text puns to the reader (where I was not able to translate them, or
where I had to change the semantic content for example). My main objective was to convey
Daly’s feminist ideas to the reader, and to translate wordplay using wordplay in my
translation where possible, to try to preserve the playfulness of the source text, but not to the
extent that it would make reading the book a tedious task.
The fragments that I have chosen to translate are from the introduction of the book, in
which Daly explains the theme of her book, and describes how language is sexist. The
second fragment is taken from the first passage. In this fragment, she applies her feminist
theories to space travel. As may become apparent from this fragment is that her ideas can be
far-fetched at times, but the fragment provided many instances of innovative use of language,
which made it a good fragment to use in my examination of the difficulty of translating
wordplay in feminist literature. I used footnotes to comment upon individual translational
choices, which can be found after the translation (in paragraph 4.1). These footnotes are not
meant as notes for the reader of the translation. They serve to explain choices in the light of
my examination of the translation/translatability of feminist texts that contain wordplay.
I could not confirm, as Delabastita suggested, that puns based on polysemy could be
more easily translated into Dutch, even though English and Dutch can be considered to be
closely related languages as they both belong to the language family of Germanic languages.
I was not able to transfer words such as “Spinster” in which Daly exploits the several
meanings of the word, into Dutch, without having to make the connotations explicit in my
translation, for although the Dutch word for spinster is the same as in English, it is only the
surface meaning which is present in this translation.
I did find that a factor that rendered the translation of wordplay more difficult was
whether one or two ST elements were involved in the wordplay, i.e. whether she used
vertical or horizontal instances of wordplay. Polysemous words such as “Spinster” use only
one form to refer to several meanings, but Daly seemed to use horizontal wordplay rather
often as well, for example, in paronymy such as “maze/haze”, and homophony such as
“ceilings/sealings” and “cast/caste”, in which the presence of two elements (words) with
different etymological roots made it difficult to find a translation with the same type of
wordplay and the same semantic content. In such cases, I often had to resort to other types of
wordplay than the pun, to be able to maintain the playful nature of the text.
26
One such solution that proved to be very useful was to insert letters in brackets into
words, to add an extra word together with its meaning to the word, as Daly does by simply
inserting a hyphen. In the case of the instance of homophony in “stag-nation”, for example, I
inserted an “h” into the word “stagneren” (to stagnate), to create the word “heren” (men) and
by doing so maintain the reference to men as the cause of stagnation, as is the case in Daly’s
pun. In the case of other homophonic wordplay, such as “ceilings/sealings” (which I
translated as “muur/bestuur”, after looking for possible puns, but not being able to find any, I
chose to use rhyming words, rather than puns. This still added some playfulness to the text,
but was a lot easier than finding a pun, while not having to deviate from the content of the
text (the semantic content of the pun) too much either.
Translating feminist wordplay, was, as the literature on puns suggested, an almost
impossible task, but with a little creativity, I believe that a translator should be able to come
up with a translation that both preserves the playfulness of the text, as its content.
27
4.1
The Translation
Inleiding
DE METAPATRIARCHALE REIS VAN EXORCISME EN EXTASE
Alle moedergodinnen spinnen en weven... Alles
dat bestaat komt voort uit hen: Zij weven het
wandtapijt van de wereld uit het ontstaan en het
vergaan, “draden die ritmisch verschijnen en
verdwijnen.”
Helen Diner,
Moeders en Amazones
Dit boek gaat over de reis van (zich) ontpoppende vrouwen1. Deze reis wordt hier
beschreven en ruwweg in kaart gebracht. Ik gebruik het woord “ruwweg” bij wijze van een
understatement en woordspeling. We weten niet precies wat er aan Gene Zijde is totdat we er
arriveren, en de reis is ruw. Het in kaart brengen is gebaseerd op kennis uit het verleden, op
huidige ervaringen, en op hoop voor de toekomst. Deze drie bronnen zijn onlosmakelijk
verbonden. Het radicaal feministische bewustzijn gaat alle richtingen op, ont-dekt het
verleden, creëert/ont-hult het heden/de toekomst.
Het radicale vrouwzij-n2 is zeer zeker een Reis naar de Andere Wereld. Het is zowel
het ontdekken als het creëren van een wereld zonder patriarchaat. Het patriarchaat lijkt
“overal” aanwezig te zijn. Zelfs de ruimte en de toekomst zijn gekoloniseerd. Over het
algemeen, kunnen/willen zelfs de meer fantasierijke sciencefictionschrijvers (naar men
beweert de meest profetische futuristen) geen heelal of tijdperk creëren waarin vrouwen een
belangrijkere rol dan die van ruimtestewardess krijgen. Deze kolonisatie bestaat ook niet
alleen maar “buiten” de gedachten van vrouwen, stevig verankerd in instituten die we
mentaal achter ons kunnen laten. Integendeel, ook zij is geïnternaliseerd, en vormt een zweer
in de hoofden van vrouwen, zelfs in feministische hoofden.
De Reis houdt in dat de geïnternaliseerde Peetvader in zijn verschillende
hoedanigheden (zijn naam is legio) moet worden uitgedreven 3. De Reis4 brengt gevaarlijke
confrontaties met deze demonen met zich mee. Binnen de christelijke traditie, vooral in de
middeleeuwen, werden kwade geesten soms geassocieerd met de “Zeven Hoofdzonden”,
zowel als personificaties, als als oorzaken. De volgende Zonden maken deel uit van de
standaard lijst: hoogmoed, gierigheid, woede, lust, vraatzucht, jaloezie en luiheid. De
feministische reis onthult hoe al deze zondes volkomen verkeerd benoemd zijn, oftewel op
een verkeerde en verdorven5 manier “begrepen”. Zij zijn de specifieke uitdrukkingen afgeleid
28
van het wijdverbreide gebruik van het woord “het kwaad” om vrouwen tot slachtoffer te
maken. Onze reis brengt confrontaties met de demonische man-ifestaties6 van het kwaad met
zich mee.
Waarom leek het zo “gepast” in deze cultuur dat de plot van een populair boek en een
film (The Exorcist) draait om een jezuïet die een boze geest “uitdrijft” uit een “bezeten”
meisje? Waarom is er geen boek of film over een vrouw die een boze geest uit een jezuïet
uitdrijft? Uit radicaal feministisch oogpunt is het duidelijk dat juist de “Vader” geen
uitdrijving kan doen, omdat hij zich heeft verbonden met en wordt vereenzelvigd met De
Bezitter. Het feit dat hijzelf bezeten is, zou niet de belangrijkste zorg van de vrouw moeten
zijn. Het is verkeerd om mannen te zien als beklagenswaardige slachtoffers die “gered”
moeten worden door vrouwelijke zelfopoffering. Hoe erg mannen ook bezeten mogen zijn
binnen het patriarchaat, het is hun orde. Zij zijn degene die zich voeden met van vrouwen
gestolen energie. Het is een valstrik om aan te nemen dat vrouwen de mannen moeten
“redden” van de dynamiek van demonische bezetenheid. Dit te proberen zou betekenen
steeds dieper weg te zakken in de put van patriarchale bezetenheid. Wij vrouwen zijn degene
die de Vader uit onszelf moeten uitdrijven, onze eigen exorcist moeten worden.
Binnen een cultuur die bezeten is van de mythe van het vrouwelijke kwaad, heeft het
benoemen van, het beschrijven van en het theoretiseren over goed en kwaad een (d)waas van
bedrog 7 gevormd. De Reis van zich ontpoppende vrouwen houdt in dat wij door deze
(d)waasheid heen moeten breken— de vrije ruimte in te springen, een verbazingewekkend
ont-(d)wazend proces8.
Als we door deze Mannelijke Dwaasheid heen breken, is dat tegelijkertijd exorcisme
en extase9. We moeten hiervoor10 door en voorbij de voorgrond van de vaders die de arena
der spelen vormt spinnen. Dit spinnen houdt in dat we oog in oog komen te staan met de
demonen die de doorgang blokkeren wanneer we poort na poort doorgaan richting de diepst
gelegen kamers in ons thuisland, welke de Achtergrond van onsZelf11 vormt. Zoals Denise
Connors al opmerkte, is de Achtergrond het rijk van de wilde werkelijkheid van het Zelf van
vrouwen.
Wanneer
we
opgesloten
zitten
in
de
door
mannen
gedomineerde,
monodimensionale voorgrond, veranderen we in objecten en raken we vervreemd 12 .
Zodoende creëren de toezichthouders van de voorgrond, de mannelijke mythe-meesters,
prominente en in-hoge-mate-maar-beter-te-vergeten 13 beelden van vrouwen in hun kunst,
literatuur, en massamedia — beelden die bedoeld zijn om vrouwen volgens mannelijke
maatstaven vorm te geven.
De Achtergrond waar de feministische Reis heenspint is het wilde rijk van de Heksen
en Oude Wijven. Het is een Heks-ocratie. De demonen die de poorten naar de diepergelegen
29
ruimten van dit rijk proberen te blokkeren nemen vaak gr(a)uwelijke 14 vormen aan,
vergelijkbaar met giftige gassen die met de gewone zintuigen niet zijn waar te nemen. Elke
keer als we op weg gaan naar de diepere ruimten, hebben deze verlammende gruwelijke
gassen er op een verlammende uitwerking op ons, ons in de val te lokken, zodat we niet meer
vooruit kunnen gaan. Elke keer als we er in slagen hun verlammende effect te overwinnen
komen meer sluimerende zintuigen tot leven. Onze innerlijke ogen gaan open, onze innerlijke
oren zijn niet langer verstopt. We hebben de kracht gevonden om door de volgende poort te
gaan, en de daaropvolgende. Deze inwaartse/buitenwaartse beweging is wat het betekent om
te zij-n. Het betekent het spinnen van kosmische wandtapijten. Het betekent het naar de
Achtergrond spinnen en wervelen.
Het spinproces vereist dat de oorzaken van de gruwelijke gassen die naar de
diepgelegen kamers in onze geest zijn gelekt worden achterhaald. “Als we terug willen naar
de werkelijkheid, moeten we ons beeld ervan vernietigen,” zei Bergson. Dat klopt, maar
deze beelden van bedrog15 waren/zijn ons ingeprent door taal — de alomtegenwoordige taal
der mythen, openlijk en via het onderbewustzijn overgebracht door religie, “grootse kunsten,”
literatuur, de dogma’s van het beroepsleven16, de media, grammatica. Sterker nog, bedrog is zelfs
ingenesteld in de structuur van de woorden die we gebruiken, en dat is waar ons exorcisme kan
beginnen. Het woord spinster wordt in het Engels vaak als denigrerende term gebruikt, met de
betekenis van oude vrijster17, maar kan alleen op deze manier functioneren als het uitsluitend op
een oppervlakkig (voorgrond-)niveau wordt opgevat. De diepere betekenis, die zo ver naar de
Achtergrond is teruggedrongen dat we diep moeten spinnen om het terug te halen, is duidelijk en
krachtig: “een vrouw wier beroep het is te spinnen.” Er is geen reden om de betekenis van dit
rijke en kosmische werkwoord te beperken. Een vrouw wier beroep spinnen is neemt deel in de
wervelende beweging van het scheppen. Zij die voor haarZelf 18 heeft gekozen, haarZelf bij
voorkeur beschrijft noch in relatie tot kinderen noch tot mannen, die zich met zichZelf
identificeert, is een Spinster, een wervelende derwisj, die een nieuwe tijd/ruimte inspint. Een
ander voorbeeld vormt het woord glamour, waarvan de eerste betekenis zoals die gegeven wordt
in het woordenboek19 Merriam-Webster “een betovering” is. Er werd oorspronkelijk geloofd dat
heksen de kracht der glamour/betovering 20 bezaten en volgens de auteurs van de Malleus
Maleficarum konden heksen met hun glamour/betovering het mannelijk “lid” laten verdwijnen.
In hedendaags taalgebruik, is deze betekenis bijna volledig naar de Achtergrond verdwenen, en
wordt de kracht van de term verhuld en verstikt door voorgrondbeelden zoals de beelden die
worden geassocieerd met het tijdschrift Glamour.
Reizen is multidimensionaal. De verschillende betekenissen en beelden die het woord
oproept zijn niet makkelijk te onderscheiden. We kunnen denken aan mystieke reizen,
30
zoektochten, avontuurlijke reizen, het bevorderen van vaardigheden, van fysieke en
intellectuele moed. Zo zijn er ook meerdere barrières die met elkaar verweven zijn. Deze
barrières zijn niet zomaar onbeweeglijke blokkades, maar zijn eerder misleidende
tongen/talen 21 die verhinderen dat we onsZelf kunnen horen doordat ze onophoudelijk
babbelen in de Toren van Babel, die de oprichting/erectie22 van de fallocratie symboliseert. De
stemmen en stiltes van Babel doordringen all onze zintuigen. Zij vormen de penetrerende
verlengstukken van de vijand van het vrouwelijke luisteren, dromen, scheppen. Babel komt
naar verluidt van een Assyrisch-Babylonisch woord dat “de poort naar God” betekent.
Wanneer vrouwen door deze meervoudige barrière heen breken, die bestaat uit misleidingen
die “god” geëjaculeerd heeft, kunnen we een glimp opvangen van de ware poorten naar onze
diepten — de Poorten van de Godin.
Spinsters kunnen onze weg terug vinden naar de werkelijkheid door de bedrieglijke
beelden ervan te vernietigen, die ons zijn opgelegd door de taal en mythen van Babel. We
moeten leren de taal der fallocratie die ons in de ban van onderworpenheid houden te ver-/ontbannen23. Deze ban splijt onze beelden van onsZelf en van de kosmos, openlijk en via het
onderbewustzijn. Reizen naar de Achtergrond houdt in dat we inzien dat zowel de “geest” en
de “materie” die ons wordt gepresenteerd in de voorgrond van de vader slechts
materialiseringen, condensaties zijn. Zij vormen geen echte “tegengestelden”, omdat ze veel
met elkaar gemeen hebben: ze zijn beide dood en passief. Dit wordt duidelijk als we in gaan
zien dat taal patriarchaal is. Zo zijn de woorden textiel en tekst beide afgeleid van het Latijnse
woord texere24, dat “weven” betekent. Vrouwen moeten zich bewust worden van het ironische
aan deze tweedeling in betekenis. Ons proces van kosmisch weven is namelijk achtergebleven
en teruggebracht tot het niveau van het vervaardigen en onderhouden van textiel. Hoewel er
met het beroep zelf niets mis is, heeft het beperken van de rol van de vrouw tot het rijk der
spinrokken ons Goddelijke Recht om creatief te weven aangetast en gereduceerd tot het
stoppen van sokken. Als we kijken naar het woord tekst in vergelijking met het woord textiel,
zien we dat dit de keerzijde van de schizoïde gereduceerde versies van het weven/spinnen
voorstelt. “Teksten” zijn het koninkrijk van mannen, het rijk van het gematerialiseerde woord,
van de gecondenseerde/gereduceerde25 geest. In de patriarchale traditie zijn naaien en spinnen
meisjes, terwijl boeken zijn voorbehouden aan jongens zijn.
31
Geen wonder dat veel vrouwen een afkeer voelen voor het rijk der spinrokken, dat het
slavenhok en de gevangenis voor vrouwenlichamen en –geesten is geweest26. Geen wonder dat
veel vrouwen het mannelijke koninkrijk van teksten hebben gezien als een aantrekkelijke
afleiding van de dodenstad der weefsels die symbool stond voor de inperking/reductie van
vrouwelijke energie.* Het koninkrijk van door mannen geschreven teksten leek het ideale rijk
te zijn om te bereiken/betreden, aangezien we geleerd hebben te vergeten dat het proces van
professionele “kennis” van ons is afgenomen. Zoals Andrée Collard opmerkte, leren we in een
maatschappij met smerissen en rovers te vergeten dat de smerissen de rovers zijn, dat ze ons
van alles beroven: onze mythen, onze energie, onze goddelijkheid, onsZelf.
De geest van vrouwen is zodanig aangetast en monddood gemaakt dat er, in plaats van
de naam van ons verbaliserende27, zij-nde Zelf, “Vrije Geest” als een merknaam voor riemen
of koper op gebrandmerkt is. Vrouwen worden door zulke merknamen gestigmatiseerd als
imbeciel. Doordat vrouwen “imbeciel” worden gehouden 28 , geloven ze dat door mannen
geschreven teksten (bijbels, literair, medisch, juridisch, wetenschappelijk) de “waarheid” zijn.
Vrouwen zijn zodanig ge-man-ipuleerd29, dat ze gaan verlangen naar acceptatie als volgzame
symbolische medewerkers die mannelijke teksten navolgen, technologie toepassen voor
mannelijke doeleinden, mannelijke verzinsels accepteren als de ware aard van de
werkelijkheid. Het patriarchaat heeft onze kosmos gestolen en hem teruggegeven in de vorm
van het tijdschrift Cosmopolitan en cosmetica30. Ze hebben onze kosmos verzonnen, onsZelf
verzonnen. We moeten op een moedige manier zondigen tegen de zonden van de Vaders, om
dieper naar de Achtergrond te kunnen spinnen. Omdat onze zintuigen steeds verder tot leven
komen, kunnen we zien/horen/voelen hoe we door hun teksten zijn misleid. We maken een
begin met het ontrafelen van onze lijkwades. Het proces van exorcisme, van het afpellen van
de lagen verband en cosmetica, is een ontwikkeling voorbij het door het patriarchaat opgelegde
besef van werkelijkheid en identiteit. Dit proces van ontmystificatie, het ont-(d)wazen van De
Leugens, is wat extase inhoudt.
* We moeten niet vergeten dat de levens van talloze vrouwen verspild zijn in zowel de
slavenhokken van de textielfabrikanten en kledingmakers als in het alledaagse eentonige werk
van het naaien, verstellen, wassen en strijken.
32
De inwaartse reis is op alle gebieden een beweging naar het centrum van het Zelf. De
ingeplante pseudotweedelingen tussen het Zelf en de “andere werkelijkheid”worden
uitgewist, terwijl de onwerkelijkheid van zowel “het zelf” als “de wereld” worden
ontmaskert, zoals deze worden afgeschilderd en bedrogen in de taal van de voorgrond van de
vaders. Adrienne Rich schreef:
Om ervoor te zorgen dat het vuur der kritisch denken invloed zal hebben op haarzelf als
onderwerp, tijdens het proces van zich meer bewust worden van haar situatie in de wereld, zou
een vrouw wel eens dieper dan ooit met haar onderbewustzijn en met haar lichaam in contact
kunnen komen te staan.31
Je bereikt de Achtergrond/het Middelpunt niet door naar je navel te staren. Het vereist
in de wereld te zij-n. De vaders van de voorgrond bieden ons lokmiddelen met twee doeleinden
met de labels “denken” en “doen”, die ons afleiden van de werkelijkheid van zowel een
bewustzijn diep van binnen als van externe actie. Het is niet mogelijk om deze twee echt van
elkaar te scheiden.
Participatie in het Paradijs is wat de Reis in wezen is. Het woord, paradijs32, dat naar
zeggen van de Iraanse woorden pairi (wat “rond” betekent”) en daēza (wat “muur” betekent)
is afgeleid, wordt gewoonlijk gebruikt om een beeld van een ommuurde tuin der lusten op te
roepen. Het Patriarchale Paradijs zoals het wordt geprojecteerd in de westerse en oosterse
religieuze mythologie, wordt voorgesteld als een plaats of staat waarin de zielen van de
rechtschapenen na de dood eeuwige gelukzaligheid genieten, oftewel naar de hemel gaan33.
Ondanks theologische pogingen om dit beeld levendig te doen lijken, is het beeld er eerder
een van stagnatie (door stagn(h)eren 34 ), zoals wordt gesuggereerd in de uitdrukking “het
leven na de dood”. Het Paradijs van het kosmische spinnen is echter niet het Paradijs van de
insluiting door muren. Het is juist een beweging die niet kan worden ingesloten, die rond en
voorbij muren (z)weeft35, ze in voorbije tijden36 laat. Het begeeft zich naar de Achtergrond
dat het bewegende middelpunt is van het Zelf, dat het Zelf in staat stelt “naar buiten te
treden” in de kosmos wanneer zij tot leven komt. Deze metaforische beweging is niet het
leven na de dood, maar het nu leven, het ont-dekken van het leven.
HANDDRUK IN DE RUIMTE: EEN ASTRONOMISCHE HORROR SHOW
In juli 1975 vond er een ruimtespektakel plaats dat door nieuwslezers werd gefabriceerd en
omschreven als “een technologisch wonder”. Het ging hier om de wereldberoemde “eerste
internationale koppeling in de ruimte”. Er was in feite sprake van een internationale
33
geslachtsdaad,
het
was,
om
Jan
Raymonds
woorden
te
gebruiken
“geile
geslachtsgemeenschap” 37 tussen het Amerikaanse ruimteschip “Apollo” en zijn Russische
tegenhanger “Sojoez” (wat “verbond”38 betekent). In een officieel persbericht uit Houston
werd verklaard dat naar de paring verwijst met het woord “androgyn”, verklaarde dat het
Amerikaanse ruimteschip de “mannelijke” of actieve rol speelde op donderdag (17 juli) door
zijn “neus” in de “neus” van het Russische ruimteschip te steken. Om de stand gelijk te
trekken, werden de rollen tussen de toestellen op zaterdag (19 juli) omgekeerd. De schrijver
van het persbericht kreeg de smaak te pakken en verklaarde dat een eerdere Apollokoppeling “een zuivere man-vrouw aangelegenheid was — een sonde die precies past in het
ontvangstruim.” Terwijl hun ruimteschepen androgyne seks genoten in de ruimte, stelden de
astronauten en kosmonauten zich tevreden met een handdruk, het traditionele symbool van
broederschap. Het essentiële punt is dat de echte verbond uitsluitend mannelijk was, ondanks
de wisseling van geslachtsrol van de copulerende capsules 39 . Zoals één van de laatste
berichten van het ruimtevaartcentrum in Houston het bracht: “Het belang van de verbonden
handen cirkelt rond de aarde.” Het mannelijke mono-geslachtelijke verbond cirkelt rond de
aarde en verstikt haar in zijn greep.
Als we wat aandacht besteden aan de technologische details van de mannelijke paring
die bij dit schouwspel in de sterren40 betrokken waren, kan dat ons helpen de naar pracht en
praal smachtende schijterd41 die zich in de patriarchale processies manifesteert . De helden,
die volledig handelden volgens de aanwijzingen van computers (hun meesters), zagen zich
gedwongen van ruimteschip naar ruimteschip te kruipen. Zelfs bij hun roemrijke terugkomst
moesten ze er uitkruipen. Hoewel hun gekruip succes tot gevolg had, werden ze wel
getroffen door het giftige gele gas dat door hun voertuig werd uitgestoten. Volgens de
berichten namen ze, “enkel als profylacticum”, in een chronische staat van angst om de
controle over hun uitscheidingsorganen te verliezen, Lomotil tabletten (een antidiarreemiddel). Het ruimtevoedsel, dat door kosmonaut Leonov werd geprezen om zijn
“versheid”, was eigenlijk verpakt in tubes, blikken en plastic zakjes die met elastiekjes aan de
tafel bevestigd waren. Zulke schandelijke details onthullen de echte rollen van de helden in
dit technologisch miraculeuze cirkelen. Hierin vinden we een aanwijzing over de behoefte
aan geüniformeerde kleermakerspraal in de “processie van de zonen van geschoolde
mannen.” De gerobotiseerde procesoren zijn de zoon van hun eigen machines, en worden
eerder bestuurd dan dat zij besturen. Boven alles zijn ze niet vrij. Deze geüniformeerde praal
(ruimtepakken, priesterlijke of gerechtelijke ambtsgewaden, professorale toga’s en
operatiekleding) vormt de compensatie van de arbeider. Deze praal vormt een armzalige
troost voor de niet erkende wetenschap dat de processies uiteindelijk niet belangrijker zijn
34
dan computergestuurd gekruip.
VAN ROBOTSCHAP NAAR ROBOTICIDE: HER-OVERWEGEN
Hoe “passen” vrouwen in het geheel van deze ruimte van banale mannelijke paring,
deze wereld van stukgelopen huwelijken 42 ? We worden geacht in de “familiefoto’s” te
passen — zoals de ruimtehelden ze ook in hun vaartuig hadden staan — en in de beelden die
op tv en in de geschreven pers worden vertoond. In de tv-beelden van de thuiskomst,
glimlachten de echtgenotes uit uitzinnige euforie (wellicht met de hulp van de moderne
geneeskunde) terwijl hun meesters hen met minder enthousiasme begroetten. Vrouwen
worden geacht aan deze beelden te voldoen, als beelden, oftewel als projecties.* In het
tegenwoordige stadium van de technologie wordt de “tegenwoordigheid” (afwezigheid) van
vouwen vertegenwoordigd
43
door foto’s of tweedimensionale televisiebeelden. De
fallotechnologische vooruitgang gaat richting de productie van driedimensionale, perfect hervormde “vrouwen”, oftewel holle hollogrammen. Deze projecties, of vrouwelijke
nonvrouwen, de vervanging van het vrouwelijke Zelf, kunnen natuurlijk uiteindelijk in een
“vaste” vorm worden geprojecteerd — als vaste, niet biologisch afbreekbaar afvalstoffen44 van
het technologische proces, als robots. Uiteindelijk kunnen de “vaste” vervangers ook uit vlees
en bloed bestaan (en zijn niet slechts machines), geproduceerd door zulke “wonderbaarlijke”
technieken als totale therapieën (zoals B.F. Skinners gedragspsychologie), transseksualiteit en
klonen. De opmars van mechanische mannelijke vooruitgang richt zich op het elimineren van
de vrouwelijke Zelfcenterende werkelijkheid. Of onze vervangers materieel gezien nu “hol” of
“vast” zijn, is niet de essentiële kwestie. Dit zijn slechts verschillende manieren om de
afwezigheid van Vrouwelijke Diepgang, van de ziel, in vrouwelijke nonvrouwen die door
mannelijke moeders zijn ontvangen te benoemen.
* Het feit dat sinds de “handdruk in de ruimte” een paar vrouwen zijn aangewezen om
met toekomstige ruimteveren mee te gaan heeft de situatie absoluut niet veranderd. Een bericht
van de Associated Press, gepubliceerd in The Boston Globe op 17 januari 1978, meldde dat “er
tussen de 35 kandidaten voor de ruimtevluchten vin de komende tien jaar zes vrouwen, drie
donkere mannen en een Aziaat waren” Zulke symbolische gebaren zijn bedoeld om stereotype
beelden verborgen te houden en tegelijkertijd te versterken. De verschijningsvormen en
functies van zulke gebaren zullen in dit boek worden besproken.
35
Ik zal deze holle/vaste diepgangloze staat robotitude, robotschap noemen. Het is te
vergelijken met een term die door Françoise d”Eaubonne is verzonnen om de onderworpen
status van de vrouw in een fallocratische wereld te beschrijven: “feminitude”. Robotschap
benadrukt echter hoe het leven in een staat van dienstbaarheid wordt gereduceerd tot
mechanische bewegingen. Bovendien slaat dit woord niet op een specifieke sekse en het is
daarom niet beperkt tot vrouwen. Dat is het zeker niet. De verschillen tussen het vrouwelijke en
het mannelijke robotschap zijn echter wel cruciaal.
Vrouwen worden door alle mythemeesters en ordehandhavers aangemoedigd, of
eigenlijk ont-moedigd, om zich een niveau waarop kennis en gedrag worden gehandhaafd45
aan te meten. De valse mallen, of vormen, die tijdens onze eerste maanden en jaren van ons
bestaan in onze hoofden zijn ingeplant zijn te vergelijken met de “louterende genade” of “het
goddelijke leven” dat volgens katholieken tijdens het doopsel de geest bezielt.
De aangebrachte “reparaties” die continue worden geïnjecteerd door de geestbeheerders
van de maatschappij kunnen worden vergeleken met de “ware genade” die katholieken geloven
te ontvangen bij andere sacramenten. Hoewel mannen ook valse mallen en vervolgreparaties
krijgen om hun bovennatuurlijke, of onnatuurlijke, status in de patriarchale maatschappij te
benadrukken, is de genade/het serum dat wordt geïnjecteerd anders. De reparaties aan de vader
zijn in wezen een opkikker voor het mannelijke ego, terwijl de aan de vrouw aangebrachte
reparaties een kalmerende werking hebben. Het schrille contrast tussen de “oppeppers” voor
mannen en de “kalmeringsmiddelen” voor vrouwen kan worden waargenomen in alle
manifestaties van cultuur, inclusief alle hedendaagse films (met zeldzame opmerkelijke
uitzonderingen als Harold and Maude). Soms kunnen de kalmeringsmiddelen die aan vrouwen
worden toegediend foutief worden ervaren als “hoogtepunten”. Deze onderdrukken echter het
authentieke Zelf, pent haar vast aan een kruis door een dubbel(e) spel(d)46.
Simone de Beauvoir schreef in Pleidooi voor een Moraal der Dubbelzinnigheid dat de
adolescentie een periode vol keuzes blijkt te zijn in de levensloop van een mens. Ze voegt
hieraan toe:
Ongetwijfeld kan deze beslissing nog altijd heroverwogen worden, maar in werkelijkheid
zijn koersveranderingen moeilik, omdat de wereld onze keuze terugkaatst zodat deze in de
wereld die zij ontworpen heeft haar eigen bekrachtiging vindt; zo ontstaat er een steeds
nauwere cirkel waaruit een ontsnapping steeds onwaarschijnlijker wordt.47
Deze passage is een treffende beschrijving48 van de situatie van vrouwen die omgeven
zijn door Misleidende Processies, die worden verstikt door de cirkels met hun valse keuzes die
ons worden opgelegd. De Beauvoir benoemt uitstekend wat het inhoudt om echt te kiezen:
36
Existeren is [...] zich in de wereld werpen: men kan hen die niets anders weten te doen dan
deze oorspronkelijke beweging te onderdrukken als ondermensen [lees: vrouwen] beschouwen;
zij hebben ogen en oren maar zij houden zich van hun kinderjaren af blind en stom, zij blijven
liefdeloos, begeerteloos.49
Vrouwen die door een dubbel(e) spel(d) op een kruis gefixeerd zijn, zijn gedoemd
zichzelf blind en doof te maken. De blindheid en doofheid, samen met de stomheid en de
omcirkelde verlamming die hun opgelegd zijn, verschillen met de defecten in mannen die de
gevestigde macht vormen, die de “basisbeweging” richting het zij-n hebben belet. Zij hebben
de rol van misleiders/bestuurders op zich genomen, hoewel ze psychisch kreupel zijn, en
hoewel hun keuzes werden geconditioneerd. Hun ego’s worden in stand gehouden, zij het op
een uiterst zelfdestructieve manier.
De “beslissing”, zo schrijft de Beauvoir, kan altijd worden heroverwogen. Het is
belangrijk jeZelf af te vragen wat dit herzien inhoudt voor vrouwen. Het Engelse woord
consider (overwegen)50 is afgeleid van het Latijnse considerare, wat letterlijk “het observeren
van de sterren” betekent. Om als vrouw onze vroegere door vaders voorgeschreven neigingen,
die foutief “beslissingen” worden genoemd te her-overwegen, houdt niets minder in dan dat we
de sterren moeten zien, benoemen en grijpen. We moeten onze basisbeweging terugwinnen,
onze prehistorische macht om op zoektocht te gaan die door de inwendige/uitwendige
kunstmatige muur/ het bestuur51 van de Staat der Dienstbaarheid onderdrukt is geweest. De
Beauvoir schrijft: “het leven wordt zowel geleefd om zich te bestendigen als om zichzelf
voorbij te streven; wanneer het niets anders doet dan zich handhaven is leven [...].” 52 Dit
handhavingsniveau van “alleen maar niet sterven”, is wat ik robotschap noem. Het doel is
voorbij dit niveau te komen, want “een leven rechtvaardigt zich slechts wanneer zin streven
naar zelfbestendiging geïntegreerd is in zijn zelfoverschrijding en wanneer deze
zelfoverschrijding geen andere grenzen heeft dan die het subject haarzelf stelt.” Zoals de
Handdruk in de Ruimte liet zien, geven de helden van de fallotechnologische maatschappij
duidelijk geen blijk van zulke zelfoverschrijding, maar enkel van een karikatuur daarvan. Al
rondcirkelend in hun ruimteschepen, hun schoot-schroot53, illustreren zij de paradigmatische
mythe van de Processie van de schoot tot aan het graf (als “schroot”), van afstand nemen en
terugkeren, terug-keren en terug-keren.
Vrouwen die voorbijgaan aan de cirkels van de rondcirkelaars, die de sterren zelf
durven te bekijken, werpen onsZelf de wereld in. Dit houdt in dat we ontsnappen uit de mallen
waarin we zijn gevormd en aan de gietvorm/mannelijke norm54 waarin we gedoemd zijn de
rollen te vervullen die de mannelijke mythen ons voorschrijven. Het her-overwegen van de
37
opgelegde keuzes uit het verleden houdt in dat we moeten erkennen dat we zijn betoverd, dat
we er door de patriarchale foto’s zijn ingeluisd/ingelijst 55 en dat we door de patriarchale
rituelen zijn gerobotiseerd. De Beauvoir schreef:
Er rest de onderdrukte heeft slechts één oplossing: de harmonie van die mensheid waarvan men
hem [haar] wil uitsluiten [...].....Om deze opstand te voorkomen zal de onderdrukking onder
andere de list te baat nemen zich te camoufleren als natuurlijke situatie: want men kan nu
eenmaal niet in opstand komen tegen de natuur.56
Vrouwen kunnen het proces van her-overwegen uitvoeren door volhardend niet toe te
staan dat de strijd der seksen wordt gecamoufleerd, oftewel door de valse “harmonie van de
mensheid” te verloochenen. Dit betekent dat we uiterst risicovol moeten gaan leven. Als we
ons losmaken van deze valse harmonie kunnen vrouwen de harmonie van de Heksen, en de
wanklanken 57 van de Oude Wijven horen. Het is uiterst belangrijk dat we aan de foto’s
ontsnappen die ons er hebben ingeluisd/ingelijst, en aan het keurslijf waarin we zijn
gedwongen 58 . Her-overwegen vereist roboticide om het valse zelf te vernietigen. De
basisbeweging is de macht van het Zelf om kosmische zoektochten te maken. Als we deze
beweging tegenhouden is dat “alleen maar niet sterven”, maar als we deze terugwinnen59 is dat
uiteindelijk het enige dat er toe doet.
Het is moeilijk om in te zien/te benoemen dat de fallocratie vrouwen tot ingelijste
foto’s/hologrammen/robotten reduceert. Het zien, benoem-en van dit nonbestaan is van
essentieel belang om te lev-en. Zoals Linda Barufaldi, een postchristelijke Feministe, zei: “Het
is als de Zalige Aanschouwing” Om deze opmerking uit te leggen, voegde ze daar aan toe dat
ze tijdens haar adolescentie haar katholieke onderwijs betreffende dit geloof (in een ultieme
visie van de christelijke god) altijd verwarrend vond. Volgens de katholieke leer is het namelijk
niet mogelijk de Zalige Aanschouwing tijdens dit leven te ervaren. Ze is zich er nu van bewust
dat dit een typerende omkering was: als een vrouw door de patriarchale god heenziet, kan zij
beginnen te leven, haar eigen goddelijkheid vinden. Een andere postchristelijke Feministische
theologe, Emily Culpepper, meldde dat het vrouwelijke zien 60 haar deed denken aan het
concept van “galgenhumor” — een uitdrukking die het idee dat men alleen als men gedoemd
is te sterven de absurditeit van alles kan inzien onder woorden moet brengen. Dit idee, zo
ziet ze nu in, was de omkering van het feit dat het doorzien van de beheersende (mannelijke)
mythen het begin is van leven.
De staat van robotschap karakteriseert de tijd als hopeloos, enkel en alleen een
herhaling van mechanische gebaren. Om te kunnen beginnen met leven moet het slachtoffer
inzien en benoemen dat de onderdrukker haar verplicht haar superioriteit op een nutteloze
38
manier te verbruiken, verandert haar zodoende in een ding. Er is geen symbolisch gebaar in
een systeem dat superioriteitssappen aan ons onttrekt, dat onsZelf van de betovering kan
bevrijden. Zolang die mythe (het systeem van mythen) de overhand heeft, is het denkbaar
dat er een maatschappij zal bestaan die zelfs uit vijftig procent vrouwelijke symbolen
bestaat: vrouwen met een lichaam dat anatomisch gezien vrouwelijk is, maar met (een)
volledig
met
mannen
vereenzelvigde,
door
mannen
bezeten
hersens/geest.
De
mythe/betovering van het fallocratisme moet worden doorbroken.
Het lijkt wellicht “natuurlijk” voor vrouwen om te denken dat de betovering kan
worden verbroken door aan te tonen dat “prestaties” onder mannelijke voorwaarden voor
hen natuurlijk zijn. Maar wanneer we dit eenmaal doorzien, komen we het probleem tegen
van het ontmaskeren van en het voorbijgaan aan de middelmatigheid van zulke prestaties,
zonder daarbij terug te vallen op tegenovergestelde vormen van middelmatigheid. Ook
moeten we, om in opstand te komen tegen de tirannen van de fallotechnologische wereld,
niet alleen in opstand komen tegen hun pseudonatuurlijke “leven”, oftewel een
handhavingsniveau van bestaan, maar ook tegen hun pseudobovennatuurlijke staat, tegen
hun mythen en technologische wonderen.
Heksen en Oude Wijven die in opstand komen, verwerpen het idee van robotschap,
dat een opgelegde staat van idiotisme is, een soort cretinisme. Volgens Merriam-Webster is
het woord cretin afgeleid van een woord uit een Frans dialect dat “een mismaakte idioot uit
de Alpen” betekent. Het Latijnse woord christianus (christelijk) vormde de oorsprong van
dit woord. Het werd gebruikt “om te laten zien dat zulke idioten ook maar gewoon
menselijk waren.” In opstand komen/her-overwegen vereist godsmoord. Het verlaten van de
Staat der Idiotisme impliceert de dood van de cretingod. Het impliceert ook het verwerpen
van de pseudogenerieke “ook maar gewoon menselijke” conditie van het cretinisme. Heroverwegen is het verloochenen van deze valse harmonie, uit haar boeien losbreken, de
wereld inspringen.
39
4.2
Footnotes to the (Process of ) Translation
I first considered using the verb “ontspinnen” to translate “women becoming”, because it
would fit in nicely with Mary Daly’s use of the words “Spinsters” (seen by Daly as “a
woman whose occupation it is to spin participates in the whirling movement of creation”
(Daly 3).) and “spinning”, and become part of the network of interrelated terms. Because this
refers to “come into existence” rather than “develop, evolve”, however, it does not quite suit
Mary Daly’s intended meaning. This is why I chose “ontpoppen”, because it does transfer
this meaning, and it can also be seen as being related to the “spinning” word group, as
caterpillars are known for weaving a silk cocoon around the pupa, before emerging from it as
a butterfly.
2
Mary Daly often makes use of hyphens to create wordplay. Sometimes, because Dutch and
English are closely related languages, the wordplay involving the “separation” of prefixes
(and also of suffixes) such as “dis-” and “a-” from the word they are connected to is
relatively easy to translate, as was the case with “dis-covering” and “dis-closing” in the
previous paragraph. Sometimes, however, it is not exactly clear to me what the intended
wordplay is, as is the case here. I think that, in those cases, it is not so much a playful effect
that Daly aims at, but rather to lay emphasis on the word itself and to make her readers think
about it. In the case of the word “be-ing”, I took the opportunity to form a pun myself: “zijn”, which is meant to indicate “being a women”, and which I think fits well in Daly’s
feminist context. In this instance, I translated it as “vrouwzij-n” to make it a bit more explicit
what Daly means here, but in later instances, I have simply used “zij-n”.
3
This is an instance of Daly’s use of the verb “to be”, where I chose to change the structure
of the sentence as a result of using the more specific translation “houdt in” for “is”. In this
case, I inserted “dat” to create a subordinate clause and I used a passive construction rather
than an active construction in addition to inserting the word “moeten” (“have to”), to indicate
that this is what the women have to do during their “journey”. In similar cases that appear
later in the text, apart from using passive construction in combination with “moeten”, I also
used constructions in which I inserted “wij” (“we”) as the subject of the sentence, although
Daly seems to shy away from using sentences with subjects (that refer to women) in her
description of the journey, if I thought that that was a more appropriate.
4
Daly often uses “it” as the subject of her sentence. I certain cases I chose to use the
appropriate Dutch pronoun as a translation, but sometimes, I chose to repeat the word that
“it” refers to, to make it more explicit and easier to understand, what Daly is trying to tell her
readers, for sometimes “it” refers to a word that is not in its immediate environment.
Although “vagueness” is part of Daly’s style, I felt the need to clarify such instances at times,
as it contributes to the convincing of the readers which is the main objective of a work like
this.
5
Daly also uses a lot of alliterating expressions. I was not always able to translate these
phrases using alliteration myself, but instead, I used alliteration in other places, where there
was none on the source text as a way of compensation. For example, in this sentence, when I
translate “inadequately and perversely” as “verkeerd en verdorven”.
6
In the style of Daly, I inserted a hyphen here, to indicate that they are male manifestations.
7
The horizontal pun “maze/haze”, with its two words that are similar in phonology and
graphology , is an instance of paronymy. Alternatively, it is simply an instance of rhyme. I
was not able to find words with a similar form and similar meanings. For my solution, I first
thought of using the words “dwaal” and “waas”, which would convey both “maze” and
“haze”, but since they end in “-l” and “-s” respectively, it was impossible to create horizontal
paronymy. Instead, I opted for “dwaas” and “waas”. In my opinion, “dwaas” fits in Daly’s
context as well, as it points out the foolishness of the situation (of the different statuses of
men and women). The technique I used, however, is different from Daly’s, as I used brackets
1
40
to add an extra letter to “waas, ” (“haze”) that reveals a second word, “dwaas,” (“foolish”),
instead of using a slash between the two words. Also, because the elements are merged
together into one lexical item, the wordplay has become vertical.
8
Unfortunately, given my translation of “maze/haze”, I was not able to convey the pun on
the word “amazing”. For this reason, I chose to simply translate it using a non-pun.
9
This sentence contains a gerund as a subject in the source text. In my translation, I used a
sentence with a subordinate clause, starting with the conjunction “als,” (“if”) that contains a
subject: “we”, which is a more commonly used construction in Dutch.
10
This is, again, one of Daly’s instances where she uses “is”. Because she also uses “is” in
the previous sentence (and sometimes in even more consecutive sentences), and because I
think that this does not sound as good in Dutch, I made this sentence more explicit, by using
“hiervoor moeten we” (“in order to do this, we must”) to indicate that this is one of the things
that women have to do, during their journey.
11
Daly uses the word “Self” spelled with a capital to indicate a feminist woman’s self.
Because in Dutch, “Zelf” in a plural form (“zelven”), sounds odd, as it is not used often
(“ourselves” I, for example translated by “onszelf”, in which the singular form is present), I
chose to use the word into which the two words (“our” and “selves”) are combined, but used
a capital Z, to indicate the importance of the Self, as Daly’s capitalisation does. I did not use
“het Ik”, as Daly uses the concept “Self” for both singular and plural instances, and because I
wanted to be able to use one word for all instances, like Daly does, and I felt that it would
give this concept a less important role in the text if I did not.
12
I thought that a literal translation of this sentence, “Objectificatie en vervreemding vinden
plaats”, sounds a bit odd and stiff in Dutch, so I opted for a (somewhat) more free translation.
13
I used hyphens in between these words to indicate that they form one unit. Taken as
separate words they made the sentence difficult to understand for the reader, in my opinion,
as it is such a long string of words, where the reader can easily lose track of what is meant.
14
Daly uses paronymy here. The horizontal pun exploits the phonological en graphological
similarity of the words “ghostly” and “ghastly”. In this instance, too, I used vertical
paronymous wordplay rather than horizontal, merging the different semantic contents into
one lexical item to translate this wordplay. Again, I used brackets to add an extra letter (and
word/meaning at the same time). “Gruwelijk” is meant to represent “ghastly”, but I used
“grauw” (“grey; drab, dull”) instead of a reference to some ghostly appearance, as I was not
able to find a solution for this. “Grauw”, however, can be taken to refer to the dullness of
women’s lives that are enforced upon them by their misogynist demons.
15
Daly uses two words with the “rhyming” element “-cept-”. I used alliteration (“beelden
van bedrog”) to achieve a similar effect, that is, to create a similar sort of “catchphrase”.
16
Although the source text says “professionalism”, I used “het beroepsleven”, here, as I think
that what Daly means here are the ideas about what jobs women can and cannot (or should or
should not) do.
17
As in Dutch, the word “spinster” does not have the same meanings as in English, I was not
able to exploit polysemy in the way that Daly does in the ST. I opted for a translation with a
non-pun, translating only the surface meaning, but adding information in an extra clause,
stating the second meaning in English, so that the reader would be able to appreciate the ST
wordplay.
18
Like I did with “onsZelf”, I applied the same morphology to “haarZelf” and “zichZelf”, to
emphasise the importance of the Self.
19
I added “het woordenboek” so that Dutch readers who are not familiar with this American
dictionary, know what is meant here.
20
Although the word “glamour” is a loanword from English, the Dutch word is only known
in the sense in which it is used in the magazine. To make both of its meanings clear to the
readers, I used both meanings, separated by a slash.
41
Here too, there are two possible meanings. I decided to use both “tongen” (“tongues”) and
“talen” (“languages”), because, firstly, the reference to the Dutch phrase “kwade tongen
beweren …” (“it is rumoured that”; literally “evil tongues claim”) seemed to fit the context
nicely, and because the word “talen” refers to the fact that language is sexist, according to
Daly.
22
In this passage, Daly uses several words that have a sexual meaning, or connotation
(“member”, “erection”, “ejaculated”). As “erectie” cannot be used in the same way as in
English (i.e. to mean “foundation”). This is why I used both Dutch words for it in my
translation and separated them with a slash.
23
In the ST, Daly uses vertical, homographical wordplay. I came up with the translation
“ver-/ont-bannen.” Although “spell” is not the same as “ban”, “under the spell of” can be
translated by “in de ban van”, which makes it relatively easy to translate this pun (“disspell”). My translation is horizontal and an instance of paronymy, rather than vertical and
homographical.
24
I decided to make the words in question the subject of the sentence, rather than the word
they derived from, as I think it is more natural to say it that way in Dutch.
25
In this paragraph, Daly uses the word “condensed” in both its meaning of “evaporated” (in
combination with the word “reification”) and “compress” (in combination with the words
“stunted and minimize”). This last instance of this word, seems to play at both meanings,
which is why I used both meanings in my translation, separated by a slash.
26
While Daly may claim that “the realm of distaff” is literally a “sweatshop”, this is not true
of the Dutch translation of this word, “slavenhok”, where only the metaphorical connotation
of the word is present. For this reason, I left out “literally” in my translation.
27
Daly uses the word “verb-ing” here. Because Daly speaks of women’s minds that have
been muted, I used the Dutch word that seemed most appropriate in this context,
“verbaliseren” (to verbalise), which seemed a more important meaning than the concept of
“action” (as a verb usually indicates some kind of action) that Daly’s word also hints at.
28
In order to be able to maintain the connection that exists between “morons” and
“moronized”, I at first wanted to use the words/expressions “stom” and “met stomheid
geslagen”. “Stom” is not as strong and insulting as “moron”, and “met stomheid geslagen”,
too, is different from its equivalent in the source text, but it conveys the same image of
women who are not able to speak up for themselves are either too stupid or too astonished to
do so. I decided, however that “stom” was too weak a translation of “moron”, so I used
“imbeciel” in both instances.
29
Like Daly does in many of her new words, I inserted hyphens to emphasise the part that
men play in the manipulation of women.
30
The play on the word “cosmos” was easy to translate into Dutch, as the Dutch words have
the same etymological roots as in English. This is in accordance with Delabastita’s claim that
it is easier to reproduce wordplay that involves a borrowing from languages as Latin and
Greek that are common in both the SL and the TL. I was thus able to maintain this instance
of horizontal, paronymous wordplay.
31
I was not able to find a Dutch translation of this work, and therefore translated this quote
myself.
32
Because I changed the word order of the preceding sentence, it was not clear what “dit
woord” (“this word”) referred to, so I repeated the word, to avoid confusion.
33
Because “hemel” (“heaven”) is a count noun, and “gelukzaligheid” is not used as such, I
was not able to use the verb “genieten” for both words. I would have had to use “genieten
van” for “de hemel”. I therefore used it in a subordinate clause with a subject and finite verb:
“oftewel naar de hemel gaan” (“that is, going to heaven”).
34
“Stag-nation” is a very clever pun that I found impossible to translate using the same type
of pun. I could not convey the meanings of “stag” and “nation”, but I was able to find a
21
42
translation in which the finger is pointed at men (for the fact that they cause stagnation, as
Daly’s pun implies). “Nation” is not a vital element in this pun, in my opinion, so I
considered related words as well. I found that the verb “stagneren” rhymed with “heren”
(“(gentle-)men”), which allowed me to create a pun that, even though it is not as rich as is the
one in the source text, pointed out men as the guilty part as well. I did this by inserting an “h”
in brackets into the word “stagneren”. Daly’s wordplay is an instance of vertical homonymy
(if no objection is made to the hyphen, that is), or at least of homophony.
35
“(z)weeft” not only refers to “weven” (“to weave”), as is the case in the source text, but it
also gives an explicit type of movement, “zweven,” (“to float”), which is similar to the
second meaning of “to weave” that is present in the source text pun (to move repeatedly from
one side to another).
36
In the source text, Daly uses the word “past” twice, exploiting its polysemous nature This
horizontal pun could be transferred to Dutch relatively easily, as the word “past” (“voorbij”)
can also be used in the translation of “past” in its sense of “times that have gone by”
(“voorbije tijden”).
37
“verbinding” is not a literal translation of “link-up”. I was able to preserve the alliteration
of the source text by using this word, so I favoured it over its “correct” translation. Because
“vunzig” is a bit too strong, I used the more correct translation “geile” instead. The noun, I
chose, was “geslachtsgemeenschap”, which means “intercourse” rather than “link-up”, but
which seems appropriate in Daly’s context in which she constantly uses sexual wordplay.
38
As the English word “union”, which Daly presents as the meaning of the Russian word,
which in Russian is spelled as “союз”, has several meanings, I used the internet to find the
correct
Dutch
translation.
Acoording
to
the
website
http://www.freedict.com/onldict/onldict.php, it means “alliance, union”, so I translated it as
“verbond”.
39
Although “kisten” is normally only used to refer to aeroplanes, I decided to use it to refer
to space ships here, because of its alliteration with “copulerende”. Instead of “kisten”, it was
suggested to me to use the word “capsules”, as that word, contains both the c and the p
sound.
40
I translated “celestial”, not as an adjective, but using the noun “sterren” in order to create
alliteration in my translation as well.
41
In the ST, Daly uses an instance of paronymy. I chose to use a different rhetorical device,
however: alliteration, which is why I used “schijterd” (“chicken”), rather than the more
obvious “lafaard” (“coward”).
42
I decided to translate only the surface meaning of this pun, as I could not find a Dutch
equivalent for it. I therefore decided to render it as a non-pun. Because the pun is not an
important one for the text as a whole, the loss is relatively small in my opinion.
43
Daly uses three different instances/forms of “present” in this sentence. The word
“tegenwoordig” (or forms thereof) allowed me to do the same in my translation, even though
it meant using a less logical translation for “present stage” (“tegenwoordige stadium”),
whereas normally I would have used “huidige”.
44
I had to make the meaning of the word “solid” more explicit here, and added an
explanation of what “solid waste” is.
45
I thought that the literal translation of “maintenance level” (“handhavingsniveau”) would
be a bit vague in this first instance of the word, so I made it more explicit by translating it
using a phrase instead: “niveau waarop [kennis en gedrag] gehandhaafd worden”. In later
instances of the word, however, I did translate it using “hadhavingsniveau.”
46
The vertical homonymy that is present in the ST was difficult to translate into Dutch, using
the exact same type of wordplay, because the expression “to double cross” does not have the
same lexical content in Dutch. It can be translated as “dubbel spel spelen met”. The idea of
being pinned down is not present in that translation, but by adding the letter “d” to create the
43
word “speld” (pin), at least it refers to literally using a pin. The much stronger image of being
pinned to a cross however is sadly lost, so I added “aan een kruis”. This meant that my
translation has become an instance of paronymy, rather than homonymy.
47
I took the translation of this quote from the Dutch translation of de Beauvior’s work by
Paul Rodenko: de Beauvoir, Simone de. Pleidooi voor een Moraal der Dubbelzinnigheid.
Trans. Paul Rodenko. Utrecht: Bijleveld, 1995, p.41. I made one adjustment, however, as
Daly, uses the word “re-consider” in a wordplay. I therefore replaced “herzien” with
“heroverwogen”.
48
I changed “describes very well” “is een treffende beschrijving”, changing the word type
from verb+adverb to noun+adjective. Using “treffend” as an adverb, I would have had to
place it at the end of the sentence, which would have made it difficult to process because of
the amount of words that separate it from the word it describes.
49
de Beauvoir, Simone de. Pleidooi voor een Moraal der Dubbelzinnigheid. Trans. Paul
Rodenko. Utrecht: Bijleveld, 1995, p. 44.
50
As Dutch does not have a commonly used word that has “considerare” as its origin, I
added that it is an English word, and gave the Dutch translation in brackets, so the reader
would be able to understand what Daly means.
51
Daly uses horizontal homophony in the ST. was not able to find a similar translation, and
instead opted for a related rhetorical device: rhyme. After all, in the ST too, the words rhyme
as a result of the homophony. I tried to find other words that rhyme and are capable of
containing something in them and say something about the dominance of males respectively.
I found that the words “muur” (“wall”) and “bestuur” (“government”) met these
requirements. In combination with the fact that “State of Servitude” is spelled using capitals,
which implies that “State” can be seen to mean “nation” here as well, I thought that “bestuur”
was a good choice.
52
de Beauvoir, Simone de. Pleidooi voor een Moraal der Dubbelzinnigheid. Trans. Paul
Rodenko. Utrecht: Bijleveld, 1995, p. 81.
53
The phrase “womb-to-tomb” can be translated as “van de wieg tot het graf”. These words
do not form a rhyming combination, as is the case in the source text, and I therefore used
“schoot” (a more literal translation of “womb”) instead of “wieg” (“cradle”), because that
allowed me to combine it with “schroot” (scrap, junk), as this is how (part of) space ships
return to earth, and it is a space ship’s version of the tomb/grave. This is why I had to make
additional changes further on in the sentence. I put “graf” in inverted commas to indicate it is
not a literal grave and added a specification in brackets).
54
As I did before, in my translation of the homonymous pair “ceilings/sealings,” in this case
too, I looked for a solution using a different rhetorical device. Again, it was rhyme. For the
translation I needed two elements which “shape women.” “(giet)vorm” functions as the
translation of “cast”, but there is no synonym of “caste” that rhymes with “vorm”, so I opted
for “mannelijke norm” instead, because, after all, it is the prevailing standards, which are
created by men that have put women in this “cast/caste”.
55
Daly exploits the polysemous nature of the word “frame” here, creating homonymous
wordplay. This pun was surprisingly easy to translate, as (certain declensions of) “(er) in
luizen” (play a trick on someone) and “inlijsten” (as in “framing a picture”) have similar
sounds, be it that my translation involves paronymy rather than homonymy.
56
de Beauvoir, Simone de. Pleidooi voor een Moraal der Dubbelzinnigheid. Trans. Paul
Rodenko. Utrecht: Bijleveld, 1995, p.81-82.
57
I used “wanklanken” instead of the more literal translation “kakofonie”, as it alliterates
with “Oude Wijven”.
58
“keurslijf” may not be a the exact meaning of “chorus”, but I felt that the expression “in
een keurslijf dwingen” (“to straitjacket someone”) best captures what Daly means here.
59
The words “regaining” and “restraining” only have a few sounds that are different. I could
44
not find any words with similar meanings that are as phonetically similar as well, as is the
case in the source text, so I opted for using alliterating words: “tegenhouden” and
“terugwinnen”.
60
I changed the word type of “(the see-ing) of women” to and adjective: “het vrouwelijke
zien”, as “het zien van vrouwen” means something different as well.
45