The Traps of Gender
Is it possible to translate a book into Polish without really knowing
the gender of the main protagonist? The translators of
“Orlando ” by Woolf and “Written on the body ” by
Winterson were confronted with such a question. Both works meet the
criteria of the theory
Cixous, as both experiment with gender. “Orlando ”, for example,
is a novel about gender transgression when the main protagonist, in the
middle of the narration, undergoes a sex change. Alongside the physical
change, Woolf alters pronouns from he to she , so the
reader knows it has occurred. The whole novel, still, takes androgynous
overtones since Orlando’s sex remains doubtful throughout the narrative
(Richter 2009:167). There is no doubt that the neutrality of certain
grammatical rules in English help to maintain such sexual ambiguity,
which is not the case in highly inflected Polish. Two translators,
belonging to different habitus (two different strategies)
Władysław Wójcik and Tomasz Bieroń, tackle this problem differently.
What they have in common is that they both explicitly change the gender
by swapping pronominal expressions from male on to female
ona and by adjusting other grammatical forms. They differ in
their approach to name. In Bieroń’s free translation, the male Orlando
becomes the female Orlanda, while in Wóicik’s literal translation, the
gender remains unaltered. Jerzy Jarniewicz (1996:332) argues that both
solutions are unsatisfactory. Wójcik violates grammatical rules in
Polish “since the male subject (Orlando) can say only
powiedziałem [I said (M)] not powiedziałam
[I said (F)] ” (Jarniewicz 1996:332). On the other
hand, Bieroń correctly pairs subject with predicate but deprives the
book of its androgynous tone. Altea Leszczyńska (2004:53) disputes this,
finding Bieroń’s strategy irrational since Orlando is a male name in
both English and Polish.
Helena Mizerska, the translator of “Written on the body ” was
left with an even greater difficulty. The story of the book is told by
the narrator with no name and gender about his/her love towards a
married woman, Louise. The author, in doing so, fulfils the requirement
of Cixous’ concept of bisexual writing where neither of the halves
should be repressed. The first-person narration serves this ambiguity
since in English it is less sex-specific than the third-person one. In
her introduction, Mizerska (2000:7-8) recounts her initial choice of the
male narrator because she believes that the protagonist manifests more
male behaviour, such as the dream about castration. As the female
markers, she considers, for instance, the poetic language of love.
However, Winterson herself disagreed with her choice and eventually
Mizerska translated again, changing the narrator to female and thus
making it a lesbian story. Leszczyńska (2004:51) makes an interesting
note: with the change of grammatical gender the translator changes the
outfits of the protagonist, too - from shirts into blouses. In this way,
she implicitly constructs a female character through the accessories of
the everyday life. Białas (2006:55-56) points out that Mizerska falls
into a trap of stereotyping, as women can also have dreams about
castration, and a man can use the poetic language of love. This is
another example of how a habitus of translator, this time in the
form of a clichéd perception of certain behaviour, exerts its influence
over the act of translation. Also, one may argue that Mizerska’s first
choice of male narrator might have something to do with, as Fludernik
(1999:154) defines it, “heterosexual default structure” and “since A
(Louis) is a woman so B (the narrator) must be a man”.
Białas (2006:57), Jarniewicz (1997:332), and Leszczyńska (2004:51) claim
that it is impossible to translate into Polish books like
“Orlando ” and “Written on the Body ” without losing
their core meaning and that androgyny can happen only in English. The
lack of Polish experimental écriture feminine works in the
national literary history may be the cause, for such works could serve
as a language platform. I would like to summarise my views regarding the
translation of sexual ambiguity into Polish by paraphrasing Freud’s
citation I used at the beginning: Those of you who are Polish does
not apply; You (your language) are, indeed, the problem.