África Vidal is Professor of Translation at the University of Salamanca, Spain. Her research interests include translation theory, migrant studies, contemporary art, and gender studies. She has participated in international conferences and has been invited guest-lecturer at many universities in Spain and universities in England, Ireland, Portugal, Italy, France, Germany, Iran, Venezuela, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Chile and Argentina.

She has 12 edited volumes (among them Routledge Handbook of Spanish Translation Studies, 2019, co-edited with Roberto Valdeón, and Translation/Power/Subversion, coedited with Román Álvarez, Multilingual Matters, 1996), and more than a hundred chapters and articles in leading journals (Meta, Perspectives, TTR, Linguistica Antwerpiensia, The Translator, Translation Studies, Translating and Interpreting Studies, Translation, Translation and Interpreting, European Journal of English Studies, Forum, Journal of Multicultural Studies, Terminology, etc.).

She has published 24 books, including Textile Translations. Touching Stories, Weaving Meanings (2026), Translating Indigenous Knowledges (Routledge 2025) Translation and Objects (Routledge 2024); Translation and Repetition (Routledge, 2023); Translating Borrowed Tongues (Routledge, 2023); and Translation and Contemporary Art (Routledge, 2022). She has supervised to completion 26 PhD theses. She is member of the International Advisory Board of several international journals and a practising translator specialized in the fields of philosophy, literature and contemporary art.

ABSTRACT 

Following Hayden White and the critical historiography of the 1960s, the idea underlying this talk is that a historical text is a translation of past events. This implies that retelling stories can vary depending on the historian/translator who recounts the facts. I will focus on how women writers and artists —Cindy Sherman, Jen Bervin, Patience Agbabi, Caroline Bergvall, and others— dare to translate stories previously told by men. In line with contemporary theories of translation, these stories are translations because women rewrite, again but for the first time, what has already been told.