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Comment by dilap | Hacker News Reader

> The gendered metaphor of the "faithful" translation, whose worth is always secondary to that of a male-authored original...

Huh? I mean, men can be faithful too, and women author originals.

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I think she's making a reference to an existing theory---that historically people have talked about translations using gendered metaphors, with the translation in the role of the wife. In particular, by googling a bit I found an article "Gender and the Metaphorics of Translation" [0] (with 662 citations according to Google Scholar) which says

> The sexualization of translation appears perhaps most familiarly in the tag les belles infideles--like women, the adage goes, translations should be either beautiful or faithful. The tag is made possible both by the rhyme in French and by the fact that the word traduction is a feminine one, thus making les beaux infideles impossible. This tag owes its longevity--it was coined in the seventeenth century--to more than phonetic similarity: what gives it the appearance of truth is that it has captured a cultural complicity between the issues of fidelity in translation and in marriage. For les belles infideles, fidelity is defined by an implicit contract between translation (as woman) and original (as husband, father, or author).

and gives various other examples where people use (patriarchal) marriage as an image.

[0] https://www.jstor.org/stable/3174168

That seems to be reading _a lot_ more than what is reasonable, based on a simple gendered noun.

For a counterpoint, in italian there is the expression "traduttore, traditore" (translator, traitor/betrayer), where the unfaithful is a man.

I had that thought at first, too. But then I thought about it: she has worked on the subtle shades of meaning in words for years in order to translate things. So the more subtle significance of the role of translator is also something she would have pondered for a lot longer than most of us. Perhaps, if someone has thought deeply on a subject and worked in a field for decades, we might listen to what she has to say instead of dismissing it out of hand because it is unfamiliar.

"When you have a hammer, you see everything as sexism".

Further, it's rather selective reasoning to pretend that original works aren't considered feminine or beautiful.

> men can be faithful too, and women author originals

Both true, but in practice and looking at history, not just today, there have been few women authors and far more expectation for women to be faithful (and chaste). The prodigal son's return is a celebration, but a prodigal daughter?

Look at Odysseus and Penelope: One roamed for 10 years, sleeping with sea nymphs and witches, and was celebrated for his genius and courage; the other was expected to wait faithfully - your spouse leaves for 20 years (including the war), you have no idea if they are alive and have no sign from them at all, and you just sit there waiting for their hoped-for return, spending 20 years of your life weaving and unweaving a veil - and she was celebrated for that.

The 'unfaithful' female servants who slept with Penelope's suitors were summarily and cruelly executed.

> The 'unfaithful' female servants who slept with Penelope's suitors were summarily and cruelly executed.

In fairness, so were the suitors.

(Though, also in fairness, not for sleeping with the servants.)

Here "original" is probably "The Odyssey", not a generic original work. I read that as Wilson highlighting the gender roles embedded in Homer's writing.

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