Publications

Publication details [#2911]

Adam, Julie. 1996. The four-letter word, ou comment traduire les mots fuck et fucking dans un texte littéraire? [The four-letter word, or how to translate the words fuck and fucking in a literary text] In Gouanvic, Jean-Marc, ed. Parcours de la traduction [Pathways of translation]. Special issue of Traduction Terminologie Rédaction (TTR) 9 (2): 179–192.
Publication type
Article in Special issue
Publication language
French
Keywords
culture=cultural approach | equivalence=non-equivalence | literary approach=literary discourse=literature | meaning=content | orality | short story
Source language
English
Target language
French
Person as a subject
McKenna, John
Title as subject
A Summer Girl

Abstract

John McKenna's short story A Summer Girl raises the problem of how to translate the words fuck and fucking, occurring 34 times in a text of about 8,900 words. In order to convey the emotional and aesthetic power of these two words, emblematic of the narrator's feelings of love and hatred, the author looked at oral expressions in Quebec French. Since the main goal is to reproduce the same effect as the original text, the author examined the various meanings of the words fuck and fucking according to their contexts. Four main nuances emerge from the analysis: literal meaning, insult, anger, contempt or bitterness, and emphasis.
Source : Bitra