The Effect of the Translator’s Gender Identity on the Adequacy of Translation: Contemporary French Women’s Prose in Ukrainian Translations

Abstract

The following article has revealed the influence of the translator’s gender identity on the adequacy oftranslation. This is especially noticeable in translations of the same text by translators of different sexes.This correlation is exemplified in the contrastive analysis of the translations of Marguerite Yourcenar’snovel “L’Oeuvre au Noir” carried out separately by Marta Kalytovska and Dmytro Chystiak.The results of this research demonstrate that translators succeed in achieving a balance in renderingoriginal women’s style. In general, it is noteworthy that male translators used large lexical and stylisticresources of the Ukrainian language and applied the strategy of domestication in translation. VadymPashchenko repeatedly uses Ukrainian words and expressions, which makes his translation of NathalieSarraute’s novel “Les Fruits d’Or” more expressive. The elements of domestication are very typicalfor Anatoliy Perepadia’s translation of Sylvie Germain’s “Le Livre des Nuits”. His translation method ischaracterized by extensive use of Ukrainian phraseology, as well as neologisms and colloquial style.Female translators have closer gender-related sensitivity to a female author, but sometimes theydeform to a certain degree the author’s plot and characters’ gender identification.The analysis shows that among Ukrainian translators there are many representatives who have theirown literary style, in particular, Marta Kalytovska, Eugenia Kononenko, Dmytro Chystiak. Therefore, the question arises as to the effect of the translated prose on the writer’s own creativity. The creativestyle of Eugenia Kononenko is significant in this regard. She is well-known as a writer, translator fromFrench and English, and a great fan of feminist ideas. This article reveals the influence of translatedFrench women’s prose on Eugenia Kononenko’s own literary work.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.sal.0.31.18758