Brand new translation, same old story? The perpetuation of female and racial stereotypes in (re)translation

Abstract

This thesis explores the potential effects of translation choices on the way women and Black people are portrayed in works of fiction and non-fiction. It does so by examining the Dutch translations and retranslations of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin, focusing on the characterization of the female protagonist and on the portrayal of Black Americans respectively. By cataloguing the differences between the American originals and their Dutch translations, the analyses draw attention to the influence that translators may – either consciously or unwittingly – have on female and racial stereotyping. The emerging patterns found in the reader response survey conducted for the two Dutch translations of The Great Gatsby confirm that translator decisions may indeed affect the way readers receive and perceive female characters. The conclusion of the second close-reading study of The Fire Next Time is that the combination of implicit bias on the part of the translator and his translation strategies aimed at making the text understandable to contemporary readers have had an undesirable effect.