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!