Translation and Adaptation

I am Wisley Vilela, a 53-year-old man who works as a translator and had the opportunity of joining the translators’ team working on the translation of Our Bodies, Ourselves into Brazilian Portuguese. As part of my engagement in this project, I recently translated a video in which Amy Agigian, by the 50th anniversary of OBOS at Suffolk University, introduces OBOST. When talking about OBOS Today, she states that 50 years ago OBOS was trying to tackle the lack of access to information. Now, she argues, instead of lack of access to information, we have broad access to an excess of unverified and unreliable information. The task of curating the available information is huge and paramount. Working on this task seems to me like the work of a miner who must move mountains of gravel to find a small precious gem.

It has been with a sense of the importance of the task and of gratitude for being though a tiny part of it that I translated the final fourth part of chapter 20 of OBOS. Furthermore, I did peer reviews on translations done by other team members. It was a pleasure doing that, but it was also educational and practical since my wife is going through symptoms associated with perimenopause.

When I first contemplated the idea of joining the OBOS translation project, I thought that, by being a man, it would be better if I did not do the translation work, but I would gladly do supportive tasks. Nevertheless, when I was appointed to join the team that was going to translate chapter 20, I accepted it and gave it my best shot. I am glad I did so because it has been a rewarding experience.

In this project, I have been working surrounded by awe-inspiring women and learning from them will hopefully make me more aware of what is it like to be a woman in a society so deeply marked by sexism and bias against women. More than that, I wish that this perception helps me to make things differently, that it enables me to influence as many people as I can to do the same. What better and far-reaching way could I find to achieve this than by translating OBOS?

Last semester (2019-2) I had the opportunity to work in the OBOS translation project at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. The chapters of the book were assigned to different groups, and my group was in charge of translating chapter 20: Perimenopause and Menopause.

This experience was valuable in various ways.

Regarding my translation professional practice, I found this was an opportunity to work in a team. We had regular meetings, in which we could discuss issues on terminology and adaptations necessary to make the book true to our culture and society. We also learned how to use a new CAT tool.

Furthermore, we had frequent discussions on theoretical texts on feminist translation and the influence of globalization on translation, which served to undergird academic discussions pertaining our translation project.

Finally, I enjoyed the experience of translating a text on women´s health. I learned a lot about perimenopause and menopause, the influence that the pharmaceutical companies usually exert to force women to use medications unnecessarily, and how important it is for women to be well-informed about their health and rights related to treatments they might need to undergo.

My experience translating chapter eleven of OBOS has been pretty enlightening. As someone who has never had a Sex Ed Class and doesn’t have a lot of experience herself, I’ve learned not only how to prevent STIS, but also how to recognize them. The materials were all written in a way that was very non-judgmental.

I have also read every report the Brazilian Ministry of Health has put on the most common STIS in Brazil. Reading about several statistics on the different communities that make my country made me think about what those statistics say about our society. The source text written in English has the American relationship with health, race, and class, interwoven within it, and while translating and adapting the chapter, I couldn’t help but think a lot about those subjects and how to best represent the Brazilian relationship to them, while also questioning it and calling for help when needed.

It was very rewarding to be part of the OBOS translation project. This proved to be a valuable experience in many different ways. As a Master’s degree student and researcher of translation I’ve learnt a lot with my colleagues and together we were able to put in practice our theoretical knowledge about translation. The discussions about feminist translation and how to adapt the content to the Brazilian reality were especially important for me to learn how to deal with the translation challenges encountered along the text. As a professional translator, I had the opportunity to work with a large team and to learn about the many different aspects that are part of a translation project, especially such a complex project as OBOS that has many translators and technical advisors.

When translating the chapter about Abortion I could observe how OBOS connects the many different issues regarding women’s lives. In this chapter not only topics about health care were presented but also topics about public policies, culture, socioeconomics and history. It was also very important to translate this chapter with two other colleagues because together we could discuss about the specific challenges of the text and to develop our own approach to present the subject. I believe that OBOS is a very important material and I was very proud to be a part of the project.

In the second half of 2019, I started to participate in the research group on Translation Studies at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). Here, volunteer translators and researchers in translation are committed to translating, revising and adapting the book “Our Bodies, Ourselves” that will have its first translation into Portuguese.

In our first meetings, by learning a little more about the content of the book and its authors, we were put together in small groups to translate a chapter. My group was tasked to translate chapter 20, which covers the perimenopause and menopause period. Each member of my group was responsible for translating about 300 segments in the Smartcat translation tool. During the process of translating, we struggled to make some adaptations, such as the names of medications for hormonal therapy, because we did not know whether certain drugs are sold in Brazil and whether they are available at affordable prices. For me, using Smartcat was a challenge that I had to deal with since I had never used this tool before.

Participating in this project allows me to learn more about great translation techniques, to discuss the political aspect of women’s health and their reproductive rights in Brazil and reflect on political, cultural and linguistic differences. This experience has been crucial for my education and training as a translator.

I feel that taking part in this translation process has been an enriching experience for me, not only as a translator and academic but also as a person. I have considered myself an ally to women and the feminist movements for a long time, supporting your claim to reproductive rights and the fight against sexism; however, as a gay man, I had always thought some matters of women’s health to be wholly beyond my concern, as I would never have such experiences nor need to support a partner who would.

Having read and translated the chapter on menopause in OBOS, however, my eyes were opened to what some women in my life are going through, and I found myself better able to understand and provide them with needed support. I cannot wait to have a finished version of the book in Portuguese to recommend! This is a country where women’s issues are still belittled and kept away from the mainstream, and I believe that a book as thorough as this one will be able to do a lot of good. I’m proud to play my small part in making this possible.

My personal experience translating chapter 14 of OBOS “Considering Parenting” was a discovery process for me. Both professional and personal.

First of all, this was my first experience translating outside a classroom as a student and it made me realize that translating is about making other people, who perhaps don’t have that much of acquaintance with the language in which the source text was written, have access to the material. For this reason, I found translation to be something very human, which can offer valuable information to the world. I also realized the extent to which Portuguese is a sexist language and, as the book deals with feminist ideologies, my biggest challenge was overcoming that sexism in my translation.

The first translation struggle came with the title of the chapter –“Considering Parenting”. In Portuguese there are only two equivalent words in which we can translate ‘parenting’ into: ‘maternidade’, a word used only to refer to motherhood and ‘paternidade’ to refer to fatherhood. However, in English, there are three words: ‘parenting’ for both parents, ‘motherhood’ for mothers and ‘fatherhood’ for fathers. There are no lexical choices in Portuguese that can cover both sexes, as the word ‘parenting’ can in English. Moreover, the articles in Portuguese are marked by gender and the common gender to refer to both men and woman is the male gender. Those and some other issues made it very hard to use only a feminist language translating this chapter. For me, this has definitely been the greatest challenge so far.

During one of our lessons about Translation Studies we came across a book called Our Bodies Ourselves (OBOS) in a research paper. None of us had heard about it, but we were really interested in it and decided to find out more about the book. We were all amazed by how interesting and complete the book is and we thought it would be great to have a similar book in Brazilian Portuguese. That was our motivation to start this project and collaboratively translate OBOS.

The translation process itself started last year and it has been a challenging but rewarding experience. I was asked to translate chapter eleven, which covers sexually transmitted infections, with two other students. It has been challenging because, as it was written by north American women, the text has lots of information about the USA and it all needs to be adapted to our reality in Brazil. Besides that, there were also some difficulties with vocabulary differences between the languages.

Even though there are some challenges, I am very passionate about this project. I really believe having this book published in Portuguese could make a difference in the lives of many women. Especially because many of the topics tackled by the book are still taboo here and recently we’ve seen conservative people strongly opposing sex education lessons at schools, therefore, OBOS could be a source of information for these teenagers who are not learning about their health and sexuality at school or through their parents.