Women and Translation

Women in the Translation Business

The famous debate about gender discrimination at the workplace, particularly in terms of remuneration made me wonder if this applies to those who are active in the Translation business. According to statistics published by the European Commission, the average gender pay gap in Europe stands as high as 16 %. The cases when women have as good or even better qualifications than men, but often their skills are not valued the same as men’s are not rare in Europe. Despite all that, translation seems to be a female-friendly career. The recent research on this matter points out that translation is one of the few jobs that offers equal pay to men and women in a majority of cases.

First of all, in the case of freelance translators, it is not hard to guess that gender matters less than in a job where you are required to be physically present all the time. This is due mainly to the fact that your employer does not know many details about your personal life, so he cannot judge you according to the fact that you are a mother for instance, which is a well-known reason why some prefer to hire men.

Also, when working online, an employer will usually look first at your past experience and your rating, which means that professionalism comes first rather than gender related issues. I can also add that by asking my freelancer acquaintances about their personal experience, they reassured me that they never encountered any gender related problems while working or trying to get hired. Thus, it seems that freelance translation is a job based on objectivity and quality of work rather than personal life and other details.

It is not a new thing for women to embrace the career of translator. For at least three or four centuries, they have used translation to claim various degrees of presence in social, literary, cultural or political scenarios. What is new nowadays is the unprecedented scale on which women are translating in different fields and institutions.

For example, at the moment, 66% of those who work as translators and interpreters in the European Union institutions are women. This clearly shows that the question of gender in translation is not an issue even when speaking of highly important political institutions. Obviously, this is a great accomplishment and a clear proof of women’s capability to stand out at the work place and fight against gender related myths.

To conclude, one of the advantages of being a translator is avoiding gender discrimination. Freelancing in particular offers the possibility of working in a professional environment that is based strictly on intellectual qualities. Over the time, women have proved to be efficient in all fields and in recent years they managed to outnumber men in translation in elitist institutions such as the European Union. It seems that fair-play is what characterizes the translation business.

          

References:

http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/translation/whoweare/translation_figures_en.pdf

http://www.cambridgescholars.com/download/sample/58057