Review of: Brunhilde Wehinger, Hillary Brown (Hg.): Übersetzungskultur im 18. Jahrhundert. Hannover: Wehrhahn Verlag 2008

Abstract

In very inspiring portraits of female translators, including those completely forgotten and those still famous today, the book spotlights what was often the sole possibility for women to become involved in literary activities during the 18th and 19th centuries. The book shows how for the time period between 1730 and 1853 – a time period that does not quite correspond to the title of the book – the selected authors secretly completed their often unbelievable workload in the field of tension between translation and their own writing, male dominated cultural practice, anonymity and budding self-confidence, between economic constraints and a self-chosen or externally imposed act. The question not asked in the book but implicit to the subject concerns future research: Can we not find traces of alterity in the transfer work of these diligent and often unrecognized women who knew how to write themselves into dominant androcentric culture and who attest to a gender-specific and fruitful cultural transfer?