The ethical demands of translating Gender-Based Violence: a practice-based research project

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GBV is a global pandemic with United Nations figures indicating that 1 in 3 women will suffer GBV in her life. This statistic sheds light on a disturbing escalation worldwide created by the social effects of COVID 19 and the refugee crisis in Europe. However, beyond statistics there are human beings, survivors, whose stories I propose to explore in a multilingual documentary. My project focuses on testimonies told by survivors as I am interested in the ethical role played by translation when transmitting their experience and in the way translators cope with the translation of challenging sensitive material. My main goals are to establish which translation method is the most ethical when translating audiovisual personal narratives and to provide good practice guidelines for (1) translators and translation companies, (2) filmmakers and (3) charities.Much of the translation process is invisible as translations are only thought of in relation to their original texts and produced after these have been published. It is also common to hear people say that they like a Japanese writer even if they do not read Japanese. Translation is thus an afterthought as well as an invisible activity. Yet, this perception of translation has moral or ethical consequences. Indeed, the status of language professionals is often precarious as they face decreasing rates of pay and tighter deadlines. For instance, film translators often report not having access to images when translating blockbusters. Moreover, interpreters called on rape cases are given no background information and are expected to act as neutral conduits, even if it is impossible to achieve complete neutrality. Such situations put pressure not only on service providers (language professionals and charities) but also on service users (survivors) and charities have reported not being able to trust certain interpreters. It is thus imperative to make sure that a survivor's vulnerability is not propagated in translation, and also that language professionals are provided with the emotional support that they need. Indeed, in traumatic contexts they are offered little emotional support and the emotional labour attached to translation remains largely unacknowledged in professional settings and academia. I will thus work together with a Scottish-based charity (Saheliya) supporting survivors, a filmmaker (Ling Lee), language professionals (recruited via the specialist company Screen Language) and survivors from Saheliya, to understand their expectations before filming starts, to incorporate their perspectives into the film-making process and to make sure the filming and translation processes are undertaken ethically.My project focuses on the way sensitive material is translated in order to understand how best to respond to the ethical demand of GBV translation. Given the many myths surrounding translation and interpreting, I argue that translators require additional guidance to assist them when translating GBV material, that survivors and charities need more support when working with translators, and that filmmakers need more guidance when working with survivors and translators. The documentary will focus on the stories of survivors and the role translation has played when sharing them. It will be multilingual as survivors will speak their mother tongue (including Arabic and Urdu) and translation will be carried out as soon as filming starts. As documentaries are either subtitled or a voice-over is used, two versions will be created and shown to audiences to ask for feedback on which techniques do the most justice to the survivors' voices. A final version will then be produced using this feedback. Feedback questionnaires will also be used to understand how language professionals feel about their work. Ultimately, with this project I want to make sure that the voices of survivors are ethically translated and that we also listen to the voices of the professionals who make translation possible.