Does Gender Play a Role When Evaluating Translations?

We’re not advanced enough as a race to end prejudice based on things like sex, so the question remains: Does the sex of a translator impact how the translation is received?

No matter how far we proceed through history, supposedly becoming more sophisticated and tolerant as the race ages – much like most people become more tolerant and smarter about life as they get older – some things remain fundamental. While I stipulate that men and women possess, in general, equal potential in life (in other words, I do not believe either sex is specifically superior to the other) the fact is that there are obviously differences between men and women.

Some of those differences are physical, obviously, but others are mental or emotional. Regardless of discussions of equality, most men and women are raised differently by their parents, if only subconsciously. Parents simply have an instinctual bias towards the sexes, and will apply different attitudes and lessons to boys and girls.

More interesting is whether or not these differences show up in the work people do – specifically, of course, the language translation that male and female professionals do. Could you tell if something were translated by a woman or a man? Would it make any difference in how the translation was received?

Potential for Difference

Note that I’m not implying in any way that the work done by either sex would be less accurate or useful. The question simply is whether it would make a difference in how it was perceived – for example, if male reviewers somehow detected some sort of “feminine” tone to the translation, would they (possibly subconsciously) have a lesser opinion of it, or judge it more harshly? This isn’t crazy; I’ve been shocked from time to time by people who attach negative opinion to anything done by a specific sex in a specific scenario. Sexism is alive and well, and the sad part is, most of the people who perpetuate it aren’t self-aware enough to know what they’re doing.

No Evidence

The good news is, in studies conducted at the Maritime University of Chabahar that tested these ideas, no evidence was found of any sort of impact determined by the sex of the translator. Reviewers of both sexes had similar opinions of translations of a specific text performed by both men and women. This means that no matter what the attitude and beliefs of the people reviewing the work might have been when it comes to sex roles, they were not able to determine who was doing what.

If you’re a freelance translator, this might argue for a sex-neutral company name or professional name, to remove any possibility that a review or client might read your work more harshly simply because of your sex. Of course, if you haven’t experienced any sort of discrimination or trouble stemming from that sort of prejudice, you may not need to worry about it. In any event, it’s always good to have the best hopes for your fellow humans and professional peers proved. Gives you hope for the whole industry!