Multilingualism and women translators in the Mediterranean island of Malta

Abstract

This chapter presents a historical overview of the presence and absence of translation in Malta within the island's mulitlingual environment, with an emphasis on the visibility of women translators and writers - taking into account their relative absence until the later part of the twentieth century. In addition translation, when considered specifically in a multilingual environment, tends to be an ongoing, natural, unconscious and largely unobservable occurrence. The situation reflected in Malta's translation history is one in which translation is not as visible as one might expect on an island with a long history of multilingualism. The author argues that multilingualism does not correlate with observable translation activity but rather that multilingual ability negates the percieved need for translation "proper", or interlingual translaiton.