Translation and Gender Through the Lens of Native and Foreign Translators: Case Study on the English Translations of Uzbek Feministic Representations

Abstract

This paper investigates the issue of translating genderisms from Uzbek into English. It investigates and compares the approaches taken by both native and foreign translators to address this issue through a case study based on Uzbek author Abdulhamid Sulaymon o’g’li Cho’lpon’s unfinished dilogy, Night and Day. Originally written between 1933 and 1934 and translated into English by native translators Muminov and Khamidov in 2014 and foreign translator Fort in 2019, Cho’lpon’s work was specifically chosen, because it depicts women's repression in the male hegemonic cultures of Central Asian countries during the nineteenth century, particularly in the Uzbek context during the colonial period. Based on both the content analysis (CA) and critical discourse analysis (CDA), the researchers extracted the genderisms in the source text (ST) and compared them to their representation in the target text (TT). The CDA results revealed that genderisms in the ST manifest themselves in women's reliance on men, the limitations on their independence, their low status and powerlessness, and their abusive treatment and threats by men. Analysis of the translations showed that native translators mostly omitted genderisms in translation, attempting to protect their culture by avoiding the introduction of negative views of their nation. On the other hand, the foreign translator kept the genderisms in the TT, trying to realize the author's original goal of using genderism to encourage independence and self-confidence in women. The results of this study serve to reduce the problems of expressing gender representation in translations from many Turkic languages into English.