The translation of literary prose is rarely a straightforward act of interlingual transfer; it is a complex negotiation between divergent cultural systems, historical moments, and linguistic architectures. When approaching the fiction of Charles Dickens, this negotiation becomes particularly fraught due to his structural reliance on sociolect, idiolect, and dialect to construct character identity. Dickens’ novels are not merely narrated; they are voiced, representing a polyphonic texture where the refined cadence of the upper classes clashes with the idiosyncratic speech of the working poor and the criminal underworld.
Lecturați gratuit Rendering the Working-Class Voice: Challenges in Translating Dialects in Charles Dickens’ Novels, autor Mircea-Alin Oprescu
Lucrarea poate fi citită online în Biblioteca Didactică (www.bibliotecadidactica.ro). ISBN 978-606-30-7285-7
In this dissertation, I tackle the profound challenges inherent in transposing this Victorian heteroglossia into the Romanian cultural space. Translating specific social markers, such as London Cockney, rural twangs, or the hermetic flash language of the criminal underground, presents a unique constellation of challenges when the target language possesses a fundamentally different history of social stratification and urbanization. This research highlights the inherent inequality of languages in the translation of non-standard speech and demonstrates that rendering dialect is not only a linguistic task but a socio-political and cultural act.