The female state of the art

Feminist translation is playing an increasing role in German-language countries. A large empirical research project on this development indicates changes in the social contexts of translation. The contexts are analyzed by focusing on the (mostly female) social agents involved and the relations between them. The empirical data are discussed against the background of the theory of symbolic forms developed by Pierre Bourdieu. Socially regulated and regulating factors are found to be operative at the different stages of the translation process, engaged in a continuous struggle. In such a context, the attempt to reconstruct the translational field with mostly women as protagonists shows that translation is framed by cultural, political, economic and other values that constantly need to be negotiated by the agents involved.