Translating Homosexuality: Manuel Puig’s, Kiss of the Spider Woman

Abstract

Spanish is a very gendered language since each word has gendered pronouns built into the verb tense. Looking at the translation of a text from Spanish to English becomes interesting because the English language is not gendered, rather it is very gender neutral. Therefore, when translating from Spanish to English, it is debatable whether there is a gain or a loss in the translation. This paper looks at Manuel Puig’s 1976 novel, El beso de la mujer araña (Kiss of the Spider Woman) two English translations by Thomas Colchie and Alan Baker and compares each texts treatment on gender. In addition to analyzing Baker and Colchie’s translations, a third translation is created and compared to the two, analyzing how gender can be implied even when pronouns are not being used. This paper will analyze how masculinity and femininity are still present in translations, even when gendered pronouns are not used. Regardless of whether the language is gendered or not, the translations still hold a sense of gender in all versions of the text.