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Part of
Pragmatics and Translation
Edited by Miriam A. Locher, Daria Dayter and Thomas C. Messerli
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 337] 2023
► pp. 96–120

Chapter 5
Translating conflict in written fiction

| University of Basel | University of Lyon 3

This chapter focuses on the pragmatic aspects of translating conflictual moments in written fiction, whose meaning is mediated by translators to target-text readers across languages and cultures. Building on notions of characterization, stance, voice, im/politeness, and relational work, this contribution illustrates the preliminary findings of a qualitative analysis of conflict scenes taken from a trilingual corpus of short stories. In the two target languages considered (French and Italian), each translator uniquely modulates address forms, speech-reporting verbs, ambiguity, and unpleasant content when rendering conflictual interactions between characters. The strategies implemented may follow patterns which have yet to be fully identified.

Keywords: conflict, im/politeness, relational work, written fiction, English, Italian, French, short stories, characterization, voice
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical framework
    • 2.1A pragmatic approach to the translation of written fiction
    • 2.2Conflict
    • 2.3Research question
  • 3.Data and method
    • 3.1Short stories
    • 3.2Conflict scenes
  • 4.Categories of differences between source texts and target texts
    • 4.1Changes in address forms
    • 4.2Change in lexical units
    • 4.3Change in speech-reporting verbs
    • 4.4Disambiguation and added meaning
    • 4.5Mitigation or aggravation
    • 4.6Omission of unpleasant or offensive content or behaviour
  • 5.Conclusions and outlook
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 19 September 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.337.05nis
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