Neutralisation of the original, deletion of feminine and persistence of masculine in translation: the case of chairman

Abstract

The neutralisation of English originals does not guarantee the neutralisation of the Spanish translation and can even be counterproductive, especially if the replaced element was feminine. This happens with the replacement of chairman and chairwoman for neutral alternatives (chair, chairperson), which makes women, who are already scarcely represented, invisible and encourages the default masculinisation of the translated noun. In a study of parallel institutional corpora, the incidences of chairman and its gender variants are analysed, together with their effects on Spanish translation. Besides observing the negative consequences of the neutralisation of originals in terms of the visibility of women in both languages, the use of non-sexist language techniques used in the source text can have an impact on the target text.