I think she's making a reference to an existing theory---that historically people have talked about translations using gendered metaphors, with the translation

I think she's making a reference to an existing theory---that historically people have talked about translations using gendered metaphors, with the translation in the role of the wife. In particular, by googling a bit I found an article "Gender and the Metaphorics of Translation" [0] (with 662 citations according to Google Scholar) which says > The sexualization of translation appears perhaps most familiarly in the tag les belles infideles--like women, the adage goes, translations should be either beautiful or faithful. The tag is made possible both by the rhyme in French and by the fact that the word traduction is a feminine one, thus making les beaux infideles impossible. This tag owes its longevity--it was coined in the seventeenth century--to more than phonetic similarity: what gives it the appearance of truth is that it has captured a cultural complicity between the issues of fidelity in translation and in marriage. For les belles infideles, fidelity is defined by an implicit contract between translation (as woman) and original (as husband, father, or author). and gives various other examples where people use (patriarchal) marriage as an image. [0] https://www.jstor.org/stable/3174168 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3174168