Fanning, Vanessa Helen
Description
In this thesis I explore the question of how a translator
approaches the task of capturing the ‘voice’ of a writer when
the voice of the writer is steeped in a particular region
including its mores, traditions, culture, and language variants.
I translate an autobiographical novel, Chronique d’un été
cévenol, by the contemporary French novelist René Barral and
compare and contrast my approach with that taken to the
translation of an autobiographical novel by...[Show more] André Chamson and an
early novel of Jean Giono. The works selected for comparison by
these two eminent French twentieth-century authors are anchored
in the same region, historical era and socio-economic class as
that evoked by Barral. I compare and contrast the style and voice
of Barral with these authors, one of whom, André Chamson, was
raised in the same département of France (the Gard) and the
other, Jean Giono, who lived and worked in neighbouring Haute
Provence.
Each of the three authors has chosen a different creative
approach to portraying rural peasant protagonists, to the
rendition of dialogue and dialect and to capturing a distinctive
regional, social and tonal register. The variation in the
creative approaches adopted in the source texts necessitates a
similarly differentiated approach on the part of the translator.
My thesis reviews the concept of voice as elaborated in
Translation Studies literature and develops my own conceptual
approach. I consider some theoretical approaches to translating
‘voice’, which I see, inter alia, as embracing the elusive
qualities of style and register.
René Barral’s novel has generated considerable readership
appeal precisely because it is redolent of its particular
context. The yarns and vignettes evoke a uniquely harsh and
rugged landscape, a historical era, a socio-cultural class and
lively episodes in the life of a typical mountain village. I
provide a commentary on the challenges Barral’s novel poses for
a translator which focuses inter alia, on the difficulties
involved in capturing the strong sense of place embodied in his
novel and the challenges involved in translating dialogue,
dialect and colloquialisms informed by the theoretical
observations of Levy, Chukovsky and Leighton. I consider the
sources of translation loss and apply this theoretical analysis
to my translation. I also review and evaluate the strategies
adopted to address these dilemmas by the respective
English-language translators of the selected works by Chamson and
Giono.
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