Chapter 5. Translating conflict in written fiction

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the pragmatic aspects of translating conflictual moments in written fiction, whose meaning is mediated by translators to target-text readers across languages and cultures. Building on notions of characterization, stance, voice, im/politeness, and relational work, this contribution illustrates the preliminary findings of a qualitative analysis of conflict scenes taken from a trilingual corpus of short stories. In the two target languages considered (French and Italian), each translator uniquely modulates address forms, speech-reporting verbs, ambiguity, and unpleasant content when rendering conflictual interactions between characters. The strategies implemented may follow patterns which have yet to be fully identified.