Identity and Feminism in Translation: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Maya Angelou and Nazik Al Malaika Poetry

Abstract

Feminism and identity are controversial concepts where they can meet and diverse at different points within poetry compared to its translation. The role of feminism in asserting one individual identity or even collective identity represents a problematic area of study in translation. Sociocultural approaches in translation studies vary in their techniques of translating different texts in the light of their interrelations with identity and feminism. The present study aims at exploring the relationship between identity and feminism in the original productions of Maya Angelou and Nazik Al Malaika selected poems and their translations using a multidisciplinary approach that combines between post colonial and gender based studies. The theoretical framework of this study is based on Sherry Simon (2005) and Gayatri Spivak (2004) theories of translation in relation to identity and feminism. This paper is a qualitative theoretical research that uses content analysis and comparisons as research tools. It concluded that the analysis and discussion of data have proved that identity and feminism are inseparable due to their absolute and essential connectedness that is emphasized by the fact that each concept of them completes and confirms the other. As a recommendation, translation should reflect the intersection of identity and feminism instead of their diversities in order to assert the writer point of view.