Book reviews Synthesis 4 (Summer 2014) 113 José Santaemilia & Luise von Flotow, eds. Woman and Translation: Geographies, Voices and Identities / Mujer y traducción: Geografías, voces e identidades. MonTI 3 (2011). Pp. 486. €18. Woman and Translation: Geographies, Voices and Identities problematises the binomial ‘women and translation’ —and more broadly ‘gender and translation’— in the twentieth-first century. This relationship has been approached and explored from a myriad of perspectives in the last twenty years, and the fertile discussions which have been taking place within academic circles, as well as the number of publications which have been produced so far, demonstrate that the interest in such relationship is still vivid. What does it mean to write on women and translation in the twentieth-first century after so many intriguing and useful contributions have already been made? Why is the need to explore this link still strong? And in what direction(s) should we move to persuade that the study of this kinship is still relevant? The editors and contributors to this volume address these questions and, through their case studies, attempt to meet the “need for further studies and their innumerable intersections,” as put forward by Santaemilia in his prologue (10). Before launching into new research approaches and developments, it is always necessary to look back and take stock of what has been said and done up until now. In this respect, Woman and Translation: Geographies, Voices and Identities is a volume which follows in the wake of the early studies on ‘feminine/feminist translation’ but, at the same time, promotes new discourses. Its distinctiveness lies in the range of papers selected which helps to contextualise the analysis of women and translation in specific geographical, cultural and identity spaces. In doing so, it shows how deeply interdisciplinary, intercultural and embedded with ideology(ies) this topic has become. At the same time, it brings to the reader’s attention the fact that the exploration of women’s writing and translating is not a homogeneous strand of research although, in many cases, it still follows the paradigms of the Anglo- American feminist wave. Due to this manifold focus, the book is structured in three main parts. The first one, entitled “Geographies,” outlines what has happened, and is still happening, in precise geographical areas where the study of women and translation still seems in need of research, namely Catalonia, Galicia, Russia and Turkey. Sergey Tyulenev provides an interesting overview by travelling across different historical periods and identifying similarities and differences between Russia and most Western European countries in the ways in which women have contributed to literary processes and social changes by means of translation. For example, although women were forced to publish under pseudonyms or their initials due to the scarce consideration that translation has commonly been given, they nevertheless contributed, along with men, to the westernisation of their country. In slight contrast with Tyulenev and his view on women translators’ positioning in Russia, is Olga Castro who points out the importance of identifying women’s translation as a discourse of its own in Galicia. In her analysis, it is worth noticing the ‘post-colonial’ approach adopted by most Galician women translators who used Castilian —the ‘normalizing language’— to assert themselves and the Galician literature —the ‘normalized objects.’ At the same time, she also speculates that for Galician women, translation was a tool of liberation but also of control and oppression as, through this activity, they were seen as the symbol of nationalism, not as independent political agents. Patricia Buján Otero and María Xesús Pereira offer another Galician perspective and identify two opposite tendencies. On the one hand, the tendency to use Castilian to access the Galician literary production is ascribed to the great majority of readers not being used to read in Galician. On the other hand, the increase in number of Galician translations of the classics reflects the need to claim the independence of the Galician literary system. A similar picture to the one given by Castro in terms of double discrimination suffered by women translators is offered by Arzu Akbatur, who sheds light on the limited number of translations of Turkish women’s writing into English due first to Turkish being a ‘minor’ language and second to the reviewers’ scant interest in this kind of literature. This, according to Akbatur, has resulted in women’s lack of recognition, and therefore, visibility in the Anglophone world.