Translating point of view: A corpus-based study

Abstract

The issue of the presence of translators as discursive subjects and the relationship between translation and reported discourse have only recently received attention in translation studies. Mossop (1983; 1998) regards translation as reported discourse in which the target text is the reporting discourse and the source text the reported discourse; Folkart (1991) argues that a translation differs from an original because of the translator's voice or discursive presence in it; Hermans (1996) elaborates the concept of the translator's voice in an attempt to pinpoint the ‘other’ voice in translation and, in an article written in tandem with that by Hermans, Schiavi (1996) designs a narratological model that incorporates the translator's discursive presence. By using corpus-based techniques and tools, in Bosseaux (2004), I investigated the nature of the translator's discursive presence by exploring potential problems involved in the translation of linguistic features that constitute the notion of point of view (i.e., deixis, modality, transitivity and free indirect discourse) so as to determine the effect of translators' choices on the transfer of narratological structures. This particular article reports on the translation of deixis, modality and transitivity in The waves and two of its French translations.

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