The Construction of Gender Translation in the Selected Poems of Ophelia Alcantara-Dimalanta

Discipline: Literature

This paper explores the diverse issues which crisscross, collide, and reflect

the context of translating the poems of Ophelia Alcantara-Dimalanta, famed Filipino

poet, critic, and academician. The selected poems are from the original English of

her oeuvre to the native Filipino. In particular, the study investigates the privileged

role of gender in the translation, considering the translations were made by her male

contemporaries. Dimalanta’s treatment of poetic subjects is inseparable from the

writer’s identity as woman. The resulting echoes of translation resound not only in

understanding Dimalanta’s poetics under new lights; but also on the power dynamics

of gender in the whole of Philippine letters. As much as it is a study of the politics

of gender translation, it also treats the parallel issue of how culture, perspective, and

personal identity gets changed and reconfigured in the transition from one medium

to another, inevitably adapting to the unique conventions of the transcribed tongue.

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