Siberian Federal University

Issue

Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences. 2011 4 (10)

Authors

Vandepitte, Sonia

Contact information

Vandepitte, Sonia : University College Ghent - Ghent University , 25 Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat, B - 9000 Ghent, Belgium , e-mail: sonia.vandepitte@hogent.be

Keywords

self-translation; trial translation; source text; writer's voice; translator's voice; semantic / pragmatic/ stylistic differences

Abstract

Omega Minor, an award-winning novel describing a hybrid culture since World War II, was written by Flemish-American writer Paul Verhaeghen in 2004 and also translated by him in 2007. In his selftranslation, which won the 2008 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, he wanted to reflect his own voice, which he had been looking for in the trial translation provided by the Vlaams Fonds voor de Letteren (Flemish Fund for Literature) in vain. But what exactly is Verhaeghens own voice? Does it express his original ideas or is it just a matter of formulation? The answer to this question has been sought in a comparative semantic, pragmatic and stylistic textual analysis of the source text, a trial translation and the published self-translation of the chapter Heyhey were the Nazis!. A corpus of differences between the trial translation and the self-translation and a comparison of those passages with the corresponding source text passages has revealed to what extent Paul Verhaeghens own voice is heard in this description of a cultural and physical battle between skinheads and Turkish immigrants in Berlin.

Pages

1481-1494

Paper at repository of SibFU

https://elib.sfu-kras.ru/handle/2311/2529

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).