The Political Uses and Abuses of 'Gender' in Translation

The paper attends to the relationship between translation, language, and politics, focusing on the appropriation of the key Anglo-American feminist term 'gender' into Bulgarian and its political uses and abuses in the recent context of the global crusade against the so called 'gender ideology'. It traces the troubled history of the term which was transplanted in the post-communist world in the 1990s via translation but has not been well translated and understood in Bulgarian society. Through an array of specific examples from diverse registers such as academic publications, institutional policy papers, and EU documents in translation, the paper aims to show how inconsistency and inaccuracy in translation practices have had political consequences during and after the campaign against the ratification of the Istanbul convention on the prevention and combating of violence against women, when the term was highly contested and emptied out of meaning. It is argued that conservative forces have instrumentalized the linguistic confusion surrounding ambiguous and poor translations of the term 'gender' to trigger deeper fears and prejudices related to women's equality, transgender rights, and the EU liberal agenda. Working at the intersection of feminist politics of location and politics of translation, the paper poses questions about the limits of translatability and applicability of major transnational feminist terms. It also offers some options for getting out of the gender impasse in Bulgarian translation.