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Target
Vol. 6:2 (1994) ► pp.195–121

Translating Literary Dialogue

A Problem and Its Implications for Translation into Hebrew

| Haifa University, Israel

The present paper focuses on literary dialogue as a text type highly susceptible to inadequate translation. It is claimed here that translators of literary dialogue are likely to reduce a linguistic-poetic-pragmatic source utterance into a linguistic or linguistic-poetic one. The paper discusses different causes for the difficulties of dialogue translation. Some are general, stemming from the nature of literary dialogue itself and/or general principles of translation, while others are specific to the Hebrew language, which will serve as a case in point.

Article outline
  • The Language of Literary Dialogue: Some Features
  • Literary Dialogue: Susceptibility to Inadequate Translation
  • Translating Literary Dialogue into Hebrew
  • Examples and Comments
    • A.Reduction to the Linguistic Level
    • B.Source-text Gaps and Reduction to the Linguistic Level in Translation
    • C.Filling in Deictics
    • D.Rhetorical Reorganization of the Text
    • E.The Translation of Emotive or Phatic Elements
    • F.Phonetic-Graphic Calques
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 1 January 1994
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.6.2.05ben
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