IPCITI 2025 Keynote

Translating Rape

In England and Wales, one in four women has been raped or sexually assaulted since the age of 16 and, in 2024 alone, 71,227 rapes were recorded by the police (Office for National Statistics, 2025). By the end of 2024, only 2.7% of these cases resulted in a perpetrator being charged (Home Office, 2025). These figures are not unique to the UK; rather, they are indicative of a global pandemic of sexual violence, and in certain contexts, because of intersecting external factors, including war and conflict, poverty and economic instability, and misogynist social norms, such statistics are far outstripped. Rape and all forms of sexual violence not only inflict bodily and psychological trauma, but these crimes can also rob victims of their sense of subjective agency. In a bid to reclaim their voice and assert their subjecthood, some survivors choose to speak out and share their own stories. In recent years, there has been a swell in the number of memoirs written by women who have experienced rape and sexual violence: Samantha Geimer’s The Girl (2013), Chanel Miller’s Know My Name (2019), Vanessa Springora’s Le Consentement (2020) and Neige Sinno’s Triste tigre (2023) are some of them. Not only do such personal narratives expose the patriarchal structures of sexual violence and its perpetrators, but they can also serve to empower others to speak out, destigmatise victimhood and foster community. The translations of such texts, then, can create transnational feminist networks of solidarity. But what specifically is at stake when translating such highly personal and traumatic material? What ethical translation practices must be adopted to avoid any further harm being done to the speaking subject? Who has the right to speak for whom? What do paratextually translated elements reveal to us about the ways in which rape is culturally encoded in different contexts? In this talk, I suggest possible answers to these questions through the lens of the case study of Miller’s Know My Name, which has been translated into over ten languages to date. Employing feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir’s existentialist ethics (1944; 1947) in conjunction with perspectives on intersectionality and transnational feminism (Durmuş 2020; Susam-Saraeva 2020), I propose a feminist methodology of translation that responds sensitively and ethically to the complexities of translating traumatic texts.

References

Beauvoir, S. de ([1944] 2004), ‘Pyrrhus and Cineas’, trans. M. Timmermann, in M. A. Simons, M. Timmermann, and M. Mader (eds.), Philosophical Writings, 90–149, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Beauvoir, S. de ([1947] 1976), The Ethics of Ambiguity, trans. B. Frechtman, New York: Citadel.

Durmuş, D. (2020), ‘Lessons from Beauvoir for a Transnational Feminist Ethics’, Simone de Beauvoir Studies, 31 (1): 47–67.

Geimer, S. (2013), The Girl: A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski, London: Simon and Schuster.

Home Office (2025), ‘Crime outcomes year to December 2024: data tables.’ Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/crime-outcomes-year-to-december-2024-data-tablesLink opens in a new window

Miller, C. (2019), Know My Name, London: Viking.

Office for National Statistics (2025), ‘Crime in England and Wales: year ending December 2024’. Available at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/crimeinenglandandwales/yearendingdecember2024 Link opens in a new window

Sinno, N. (2023), Triste tigre, Paris: Gallimard.

Springora, V. (2020), Le Consentement, Paris: Grasset.

Susam-Saraeva, Ş. (2020), ‘Representing experiential knowledge: Who may translate whom?’, Translation Studies, 14 (1): 84–95.

Pauline Henry-Tierney Link opens in a new windowis Senior Lecturer in French and Translation Studies at Newcastle University, UK. A feminist translation studies scholar, her research focuses on the translation of contemporary women’s writing in French, in particular transgressive and explicit texts. Recent publications include her monograph Translating Transgressive Texts: Gender, Sexuality and the Body in Contemporary Women’s Writing in French (Routledge, 2023)Link opens in a new window and various peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on the modalities of subjectivity in the translation of works from contemporary feminist authors. Combining feminist phenomenological perspectives on female lived experience with feminist translation theory, Dr Henry-Tierney’s other main avenue of research is the translation of Simone de Beauvoir’s philosophy, with publications including a recent co-edited volume, Translating Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex: Transnational Framing, Interpretation, and ImpactLink opens in a new window (Routledge, 2023). She is an experienced PhD supervisor and currently supervises eight students working on topics relating to feminist translation studies, queer translation studies, poetry translation, audiovisual translation, and translation and disability studies.