This article proceeds from the hypothesis that translation is a reconstructing operation, one that engages decision making informed by linguistic, aesthetic, axiological and ideological parameters. The author's approach to translating the dialogue passages in The Hamlet has favored - after the fashion of Faulkner himself - not the faithful reproduction of sociolects attested to in the real world, but rather the recreation of a production model submitted to the constraints of The Hamlet's specific discursive universe. By taking up the five functions of mimetic voice described by Stephen Ross - description, communication, differentiation, identification and transcription - the author demonstrates the ways in which those functions establish the power balance between the inhabitants of Frenchman's Bend, and proposes ways to reconstruct that balance in translation.