Chapter 5
Translating conflict in written fiction
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.
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
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