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Target
Vol. 32:1 (2020) ► pp.143–161

‘We’ve called her Stephen’

Czech translations of The Well of Loneliness and their transgender readings

ORCID logo | University of Liverpool
This article aims to contribute to the still largely unexplored intersection of translation and non-cisgender identities through a comparison of three reeditions of Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness (1928) in Czech translation. While the novel is considered by many to be the most famous lesbian story published in the 20th century, it can also be read as a narrative with a transgender protagonist. This is in part supported by the fact that the hero of the story is born with a female body but is named Stephen, creating a sense of gendered dissonance throughout the novel. This article asks what happens when this masculine name changes into a feminine one in translation, and explores the sociopolitical circumstances and publishing norms that have motivated this change.
Keywords: queer translation, transgender translation, censorship, gender in translation, Czech, The Well of Loneliness
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The well of non-normative identity
  • 3.The Czechoslovak lesbian s(h)elf
  • 4.Lesbian loneliness of state socialism
  • 5.When Stephen becomes Štěpa
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 5 December 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.19107.spi
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Baldo, Michela, Jonathan Evans & Ting Guo
2021. Introduction. Translation and Interpreting Studies 16:2 ► pp. 185 ff. DOI logo

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