Hala Kamal
Professor
English and Gender Studies
Cairo University, Egypt

Abstract

This presentation is informed by the notions of ‘travelling theory’, ‘travelling concepts’, and ‘knowledge in motion’ (Edward Said 1982; Mike Bal 2002; Marwa Elshakry 2008) and is grounded in the frameworks of feminist translation theory and practice (e.g. Godard 1988; Flotow 1991, 1997; Flotow and Farhazad 2017). It aims at offering an understanding of the translation of ‘feminism’ and ‘gender’ as transnational concepts with particular focus on the uses of the terms feminism and gender in Arabic in Egypt. The presentation is divided into two main parts. The first part traces the histories of the two terms in Egypt, and problematises feminism and gender as complex transnational ideologies, travelling across histories, geographies, cultures, disciplines, languages, and politics. In the second part, I shed light on feminist translation strategies into Arabic, taking into consideration aspects of terminology, paratexts, and the feminisation of language. Connecting translation theory with practice in Egypt, and deriving insights from my personal experience as a feminist scholar, translator, and activist, I conclude by defining feminist translation praxis in terms of ‘scholactivism’ – a combination of scholarship and activism. Feminist translation in the Arab world emerges as an ideologically rooted political act – where translation theory intersects with feminist activism, leading to the production of feminist knowledge in translation for social change.

Bio

Hala Kamal (PhD) is Professor of English and Gender Studies at Cairo University, Egypt; and co-founder of the Women and Memory Forum – an Egyptian NGO concerned with the study of women in cultural history. She studied at Cairo University, the University of Leeds (UK), and Smith College (USA). Her research interests and publications in both Arabic and English are in the areas of women and gender studies, translation studies, autobiography studies, and the history of the Egyptian feminist movement. She has also translated several books on gender and feminism into Arabic, and supervised the “Feminist Translations Project” at the Women and Memory Forum. Her latest publications in Translation Studies include: “Travelling Concepts in Translation: Feminism and Gender in the Egyptian Context” (2018) and “Virginia Woolf in Arabic: A Feminist Paratextual Reading of Translation Strategies” (2021), as well as co-editing with Luise von Flotow The Routledge Handbook of Translation, Feminism and Gender (2020).