Chapter One: Narrative Point of View and Translation

Chapter One: Narrative Point of View and Translation 1. Introduction In ‘The Russian Point of View’ Virginia Woolf explains that most of us have to depend “blindly and implicitly” on the works of translators in order to read a Russian novel (1925a: 174). According to Woolf, the effect of translation resembles the impact of “some terrible catastrophe”. Translation is a ‘mutilating’ process: When you have changed every word in a sentence from Russian to English, have thereby altered the sense a little, the sound, weight, and accent of the words in relation to each other completely, nothing remains except a crude and coarsened version of the sense. Thus treated, the great Russian writers are like men deprived by an earthquake or a railway accident not only of all their clothes, but also of something subtler and more important – their manner, the idiosyncrasies of their character. What remains is, as the English have proved by the fanaticism of their admiration, something very powerful and impressive, but it is difficult to feel sure, in view of these mutilations, how far we can trust ourselves not to impute, to distort, to read into them an emphasis which is false (1925a: 174). Woolf was thus aware of the transformations brought about by translation. However, although she spoke French, she seemed uninterested in what French translators did to and with her texts. As a matter of fact Woolf, who recorded most of her life in her diary, never mentions having read a translation of her works. The only evidence of a meeting with one of her translators is to be found in her diary and a letter written in 1937, which describes receiving Marguerite Yourcenar, who had questions regarding her translation of The Waves. Woolf was not very enthusiastic and wrote that “Mlle Youniac” (D5: 60, 23 February 1937) “wasted one of my rare solitary evenings” (L6: 109; 24 February 1937). This lack of interest is surprising, as Woolf was such a meticulous writer and spent so much time rewriting, editing and polishing her texts. Moreover, translators are largely responsible for presenting the work and personality of a foreign author in another country and yet, although Woolf was most concerned with her image and reputation, she remained indifferent to the translations of her works in all languages. It remains that Woolf is recognised as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, renowned for creating challenging narrative techniques. Consequently, her novels can be expected to present major translating issues. Narrative Point of View and Translation In the above statement Woolf acknowledges the “mutilations” resulting from translating Russian novels but there is no evidence that she ever closely examined any of the translations of her own works. This detachment is intriguing and it is not inconceivable that Woolf was terrified to discover alterations of the “sound, weight, and accent of the words” she chose so meticulously and that “nothing remained” of her novels “except a crude and coarsened version” of the original sense. This book sets out to find out what happens to texts in translation and in the following pages I present a method that can be used to analyse the feel of narrative texts, also known as the fictional universe represented in the text, in order to bring to light the transformations that Woolf seemed to dread so much. Narratology is concerned with the study of narratives, their structure, function, themes, conventions, and symbols. For some time narratologists have focused on answering the question ‘who speaks and to whom’ and have developed a consistent model of narrative communication, which includes the reception aspect of narrative and incorporates narratees, implied readers and actual readers1. Interestingly, narratology does not usually distinguish between originals and translations. It is relevant to question this lack of distinction, however, since written translations normally address an audience which is usually removed in terms of time, space and language from that addressed by the source text. Consequently, translated narrative fictions address an implied reader who differs from that of the source text, because the discourse operates in a new pragmatic context. The role of the translator and her or his position in the re-assembled model of narrative communication thus become an issue: would they be the same as those of the narrator of the source text? “Does the translator, the manual labour done, disappear without textual trace?” (Hermans 1996a: 26) Such questions invite us to look at translation from a narratological point of view and to address this lack of distinction between originals and translations in narratology. In this context this book is therefore concerned with the notion of point of view in translation and offers a comparative model by which to analyse original texts and their respective translations. This first chapter concentrates on the theoretical framework behind a model designed to investigate the transfer of narratological structures. The notion of narrative point of view is first discussed and the importance of considering the discursive presence of translators is demonstrated. Different studies highlighting the translator’s presence are reviewed: Theo Hermans’ concept of the translator’s voice (1996a; b), Giuliana Schiavi’s narratological diagram including the translator’s discursive presence (1996) and Mona Baker’s (2000) notion of the translator’s ‘style’. This chapter also focuses on M.A.K Halliday’s (1971, 1976 and 1985/1994) Systemic Functional Grammar2 (SFG), which is behind 14 .

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