Virginia Woolf’s Feminist Writing in Estonian Translation Culture

Abstract

Virginia Woolf’s texts pose a serious challenge to translators, not only because of the subtleties of her style but also because her political stances, most notably, on cosmopolitanism and feminism, continue to create friction in many receiving cultures. Previous scholarship has shown radical transformations of Woolf’s texts by androcentric translators. This chapter analyses the transfer(ability) of Woolf’s cosmopolitan feminism into the postsocialist Estonian culture and focuses on the example of the translation of A Room of One’s Own (1994/1997). This text was chosen because research from other Eastern European countries has shown that its translation can help open doors to other feminist texts. This analysis shows that the Estonian translation prioritises stylistic excellence over politics but not to an extent that would mute the feminist intentions of the text. The translation indeed can be seen as a means of smuggling in feminist ideas and inspiring feminist activism.