THE ROLE OF GENDER IN TRANSLATION AGENCIES: COULD WOMAN BE AS AN EXCLUSIVE FREELANCER AS MAN?

ABSTRACT

This article is devoted to the study of the problems based on the influence of the translator's gender in translation agencies. The role of gender may affect on the choice of career. On the other hand, some people advocate the view that it depends on a person how to deal with the professionalism of jobs, with their difficulties or drawbacks. In this manner, this article demonstrates these opinions with facts as a debate. Working as a freelancer is taken as a bright example in order to dispel some doubts on this issue. These discussions may be of some importance for supervisors or business executives and for their employees.

Keywords: gender, freelancer, employee, job, translation agency, professionalism, business executives, supervisor, wage, candidate, family life, working speciality.

Probably, everyone has heard about the famous issue of gender which often affects on the job application and on the amount of wages. You may wonder if this also applies to the translation business or translation agencies. If you are a supervisor or a business executive, do you usually focus on the gender of candidates when you read their CVs, or during their job interviews?

According to European Commission statistics, the wage gap between men and women in Europe is 16%. There are indeed frequent cases when a woman's qualifications are no worse, and sometimes even better than those of a man, however, women's skills are underestimated. Despite this, it seems that the translation career is quite oriented towards women. Recent estimates in this area indicate that interpreting is one of several jobs with equal pay for women and men. Let us talk about freelance translation at first. It is not hard to guess that in freelancing, gender is less important. Because you do not need to be physically present at the workplace. But, there is no specific employer that evaluates the candidate on the details of private life. For example, he is not guided by the criterion whether you have small children or not. And this is, unfortunately, one of the main reasons why they prefer to hire men.

On the other hand, in the case of working via the Internet, the customer or employer initially pays attention to the experience of the translator. And gender issues are retrograded to the tenth plan, and professionalism plays the first role. From this point of view, a freelance translator is judged objectively, based on the quality of previous works, and not on personal information or something like that. What’s more, a freelancer-translator is such a job in which women can easily deal with both housework and profession. They may stay at home, do their household tasks, may care for their family and at the same time they may earn for living and develop their knowledge and skills. Especially, this job might help them when they are on maternity leave. Of course, a caring aspect of women may change lots of things in the sphere of professionalism, but such jobs as freelancer-translator may be a great opportunity for women in order to be motivated and go straight forward to the best achievements both in their beloved family life and profession. Because women want to balance their work life with their family life.

At first, the results of women’s translation were insignificant, but over time, and now it is obvious, women have proved their worth as specialists in translation almost in all areas. In recent years, women even seem to have outnumbered men in the top political institutions. Against the background of other professions, it can be said that in the world of professional translation, the role of a woman is not belittled.

For women in general, the career of a translator is nothing new. For example, today about 66% of translators and interpreters in the European Union are women. This clearly indicates that in the field of translation, the issue of gender does not have much importance - even within the framework of high-level political institutions. Undoubtedly, this is a huge achievement and a clear proof that in the workplace the abilities of women can be very outstanding and that they have intellectual strength to fight against gender myths.

So, it can be emphasized that one of the most important advantages of translation activities is the absence of explicit discrimination on gender grounds. Especially freelancing provides opportunities to develop precisely within the framework of your working specialty, which in this case is based solely on personal intellectual qualities.

References:

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2. Кирилина А. В. О применении понятия «гендер» в русскоязычном языковом описании / А. Кирилина // Филологические науки. –2000. - № 3. - С. 18–27.
3. URL: http:// www.lingvostar.kiev.ua-articles