Translating Harassment: Cross-Cultural Reconstruction of the Feminist Identity in Translated Fiction

Translating involves rewriting and is subject to ideological influence and power, with translators’ subjective political, cultural, gender, and religious positions affecting the process. This study investigates the representation of a harassed woman in two English translations of Khadija Mastoor’s Urdu novel Aangan. Sexual harassment, defined as unwelcome sexually determined behavior causing distress, is a feminist issue and in Pakistan often remains unreported within families due to honor pressures, though media has raised awareness. Aangan portrays patriarchal constraints on women; the protagonist Aliya is harassed by her cousin Jameel. The study asks: (1) How are the translation strategies deployed in the translated texts? (2) How is the representation of the harassed woman produced in the English translations of the novel? (3) How are the perspectival positions of the female translators reflected in the translated texts? A multidisciplinary framework combines CDA (Fairclough’s model) and feminist translation theory to analyze discursive construction and translator subjectivity.

Prior work has examined sexual harassment in Pakistani and regional literature: Mitra (2008) and Chaudhary (2013) on Sidhwa’s Ice Candy Man; Ehsan et al. (2015) on Durrani’s My Feudal Lord—highlighting patriarchal control and women’s victimization. Fewer studies address translation of harassment: Zaylah et al. (2021) found sexual experiences and harassment of Zahra were altered or disregarded in translation; Baya (2019) discussed translations conveying Egyptian women’s subjugation; Li (2020) showed a female translator gave clearer voice to rape compared to a male translator. There is a gap in studying representations of sexually harassed women in Pakistani novels’ translations, which this study addresses for Aangan using CDA and feminist translation theory.

The study adopts a qualitative, constructivist paradigm to explore how translators construct understandings of sexual harassment. Data comprise the Urdu source text Aangan (Mastoor, 1962) and two English translations: Hussain’s The Inner Courtyard (2001) and Rockwell’s The Women’s Courtyard (2018). A parallel corpus was compiled and processed with NLTK to extract frequencies and concordances, particularly focusing on the names of the male harasser (Jameel/Jamil) and the female victim (Aliya/Aaliya). Data cleaning, normalization, tokenization, stemming, and lemmatization were applied. Concordances of interactions were extracted from the source text and aligned with both translations. These were manually tagged according to Fairclough’s (2013) CDA model (vocabulary, grammar, textual structure) to identify ideological linguistic features (e.g., over-wording, rewording, classification schemes). The analysis centered on: (1) discursive production of Jameel as physical assaulter and stalker; and (2) discursive production of Aliya’s reactions. Paratexts (e.g., afterword) were also examined for translator commentary as a feminist translation strategy. Theoretical framing included feminist translation strategies (supplementing, hijacking, commentary, substitution, deletion, addition, repetition, permutation) and general translation strategies (literal translation, omission, explicitness).

• Frequency analysis of character names showed differing strategies: in the source text, male (Jameel) n=454 and female (Aliya) n=631; in TT1 (Hussain), Jamil n=203 and Aaliya n=439 (overall reduction/deletion, with more pronounced reduction of the male agent); in TT2 (Rockwell), Jameel n=422 and Aliya n=900 (addition/over-translation of the female voice). This suggests TT2 substantiates the woman’s image more strongly, while TT1 underuses both names, particularly the harasser’s.
• Representation of Jameel as physical assaulter: The source employs rewording and ideologically charged choices (e.g., grabbing, holding, kissing). Rockwell intensifies actions with choices like “grabbing,” “pressed,” “grabbed,” and hijacks expressions to stress force. Hussain omits some assault passages (two pages) and often literalizes or romanticizes (e.g., “frenzied kisses rained on her,” “held them in his clasp”), thereby de-emphasizing assault.
• Representation of Jameel as stalker: The source uses repeated gaze-related expressions (rewording). Rockwell substitutes and hijacks to intensify stalking (“staring at her amorously,” “peer at,” “gazing”), giving sexualized/animalistic connotations. Hussain’s renderings take on a romantic tone (“lover-like appreciation,” “appreciative look”), softening the stalking frame.
• Representation of Aliya’s reactions: The source repeatedly frames Aliya as startled, frightened, worried, helpless (over-lexicalization). Rockwell maintains or magnifies this with intensified evaluative choices (“helplessly,” “nervous,” “panicked,” “startled,” “clammy hand”). Hussain mitigates intensity or omits some reactions, using “uncomfortable,” “unease,” “unable to look at him,” and renders “helplessly” as “mesmerised,” imparting a more romantic tone.
• Paratext: Rockwell’s afterword explicitly labels behaviors as “sexual harassment,” “assault,” “stalker,” “prey,” and characterizes Jameel as “a stalker, a sexual harasser and a gas lighter,” guiding readers and foregrounding feminist interpretive frames.
• Overall: Rockwell employs feminist translation strategies (supplementing, hijacking, commentary, substitution, deletion, addition), intensifying the harassed woman’s image and the male harasser’s depiction. Hussain primarily uses literal translation, omission, and explicitness, often de-emphasizing harassment and romanticizing interactions.

The analysis shows translation is not neutral; translators’ subjectivities and contexts shape discursive choices. Rockwell’s strategy intensifies depictions of harassment and foregrounds women’s experiences, aligning with feminist translation’s interventionist stance. Hussain’s approach tends to mitigate or romanticize harassment and omit some assault content, aligning more closely with the source’s gender ideology while softening its impact. Differences are linked to multiple factors: personal stance toward sexual harassment; sociocultural context (Global North vs. South and #MeToo’s earlier impact in the West); temporal context (2018 vs. 2001, with greater global feminist awareness in 2018); and cultural norms that may romanticize stalking/harassment in some Eastern media traditions. Rockwell’s paratextual commentary further underscores a feminist interpretive guide, while Hussain’s choices suggest greater tolerance of the depicted harassment. These dynamics illustrate CDA’s premise of discourse as social practice and feminist translation theory’s argument for translator subjectivity and “womanhandling” the text to make women’s voices visible.

The study examined two English translations of Aangan focusing on scenes of sexual harassment and the translators’ strategies and subjectivities. Rockwell used feminist translation strategies (supplementing, hijacking, commentary, substitution, deletion, addition) and intensified discursive choices, magnifying the representation of the harassed woman and the harasser. Hussain relied on literal translation, omission, and explicitness, often mitigating or romanticizing harassment and, at times, omitting assault-related content to maintain impressions of female chastity. Divergences likely stem from personal, social, cultural, and temporal factors influencing perspectival positions. The study highlights the role of translation in constructing identities and shaping readers’ perceptions of gendered violence. Future research should expand corpora and include multiple source texts to explore cultural reflections in translators’ choices and enhance generalizability.

Findings are not generalizable across entire cultures or contexts, given the focused corpus (one source novel, two translations) and qualitative CDA approach. Some assault passages are missing in one translation, constraining direct comparison. Future work should enlarge the corpus, include additional source texts and translations, and examine broader cultural-linguistic samples to test whether word choices systematically reflect cultural positioning.