A Study On The Translation Strategies Of Individualized Speech In Fiction

The text chosen to be translated is Part1of The Dusantes written by American humorist Frank R. Stockton. Many interesting dialogues can be found in the source text, which make up the main difficulty in translation. The humorous language in these dialogues plays a significant role in the novel. It not only creates vivid characters but also reflects the unique style of the writer, which is hard to reproduce. Therefore, the main research question in this thesis is methods used to reproduce the individualized speech of characters, thus reproduce the literary style of the original text.The research method adopted in this paper is a case study. Firstly, the author collects some representative dialogues as examples and then divides them into three categories. According to the findings achieved by the former researchers, through careful and comprehensive analysis, the author proposes three principles of reproducing the unique style of individual speakers, i.e. to ensure that the tone of the speaker is in agreement with the temperament, the mental status, and the particular situation concerned with the speaker in the original text. In the writing process, the author gets increasingly aware of the fact that all the three principles should be determined by the overall understanding of the original text and the solid grasp of the personalities of various characters. Without these preconditions, even the best translators would only be armchair strategists. During the whole translation process, the author is intended to bring her own creativity into full play and anxious to create vivid images for the readers to enjoy. But she also overlooks the original style of the writer unconsciously in some parts of the translation. Therefore, the author further uses the fourth principle, that is, the translator’s creativity and translation style should be subordinated to the writer’s writing style.