The retention of evoked meaning in literary translation : translating dialect and register in The Long Journey of Poppie Nongena by Elsa Joubert

Abstract

Throughout history, the process of translation has been approached from numerous perspectives, yet these can be distilled into two main categories: literal and free translation. In terms of translation strategy, the history of translation can be characterised generally by trends towards either literal or free translation. A preference for either is usually determined by movements in related fields such as literature, philosophy, linguistics and pragmatics. This study considers the matter of literal versus free translation from the perspective of inter-cultural literary translation. Faithfulness versus creativity is shown to be a rather complex matter, considering the fact that truthful representation of one aspect of a text does not necessarily equate total truthfulness. This study assumes a source text oriented perspective in line with recent trends towards valuing the original position and function of the source text and towards considering translation as a cultural act with the view to teaching others about foreign cultures, rather than domesticating cultural elements to correspond to the culture of the audience. One linguistic concept will be focused on with this perspective in mind: evoked meaning, which arises from the use of dialect and register. The contribution of dialect and register to character representation and contextualisation endows these language varieties with special importance, especially in the translation of culturally entrenched or historically rooted literary texts. This research considers the way in which dialect and register contribute to the meaning of a literary text, based on Baker’s description of lexical meaning (1992). The study shows how overt translation, a type of faithful translation described by Juliane House (1977, 1997 and 2009), can be employed in order to retain or re-create evoked meaning. This is done by means of a theoretical discussion and a practical illustration. For the illustration, The Long Journey of Poppie Nongena (1980), the English translation of Elsa Joubert’s novel Die Swerfjare van Poppie Nongena (1978), is analysed to prove the loss of meaning that results when dialect and register are not adequately translated because of a tendency towards domestication (cultural adaptation in favour of the audience of the translation). The study uses House’s first model for translation quality assessment (1977) to point out shortcomings related to the expression of dialect and register in this translation. The first twenty one chapters of the source text are then re-translated to illustrate how evoked meaning can be better expressed with a full implementation of overt translation strategies. Overt translation is thus proven to be a viable solution to the problem of retaining evoked meaning in literary translation.