Point of View in Translation: A Corpus-based Study of French Translations of Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse

Abstract

Narratology does not distinguish between original and translated fiction. Indeed, narratological models, such as the one proposed by Chatman (1990:74) do not pay any attention to the translator. Since the 1990's, the visibility of translators in translated narrative texts has been increasingly discussed and researchers like Schiavi (1996) and Hermans (1996) introduced the concept of the translator's voice, which attempts to recognise the 'other' voice in translation, i.e., the presence of the translator. Corpus-based translation studies have also focused on recurrent features of translated language (see, for example, Baker 1993, Kenny 2001; Laviosa 1997; Olohan & Baker 2000), and corpus techniques and tools are being employed to identify the translators' 'style' in their translations (Baker 2000). Bosseaux (2004) seeks to define the nature of the translator's discursive presence by exploring certain narratological aspects of the relation between originals and translations. This investigation is particularly concerned with the potential problems involved in the translation of linguistic features that constitute the notion of point of view, i.e., deixis, modality, transitivity and free indirect discourse, and seeks to determine whether and how the translator's choices affect the transfer of narratological structures. This paper looks specifically at the translation of free indirect discourse inTo the Lighthouseand its three French translations:Promenade au Phare(1929) translated by Maurice Lanoire, Voyage au Phare(1993) by Magali Merle andVers le Phare(1996) by Françoise Pellan.