Law and Gender in Translation: Introduction

Translation provides both an analytical tool and conceptual model for feminist legal research. Drawing on translation studies, feminist theory, and scholarship on gender and legal language, we show how translation assists in identifying how gendered points of difference and friction in law are articulated in communicative practice. The article moves from translation as the mechanical movement of meaning across linguistic boundaries to a sociocultural conception of translation as transformative of meanings assigned to ideas, knowledge, representations, and practices. We outline a conceptual agenda that addresses the relationship between law, gender and translation showing how focus on context, circulation and change harnesses and enables feminist legal method and research. Gendered aspects of linguistic practice and discourse include the power to interpret, translate and provide particularistic representations that both silence and enable. The article proposes a framework of use in promoting new modes of interdisciplinary research and dialogue in feminist legal studies.