13. LITERARY TEXTS
Literary texts are different from all other types of text because authors
don’t have to respect any standard conventions at all. Basically, there
are no rules; each individual author writes what s/he wants and how
s/he wants.
The translator has to “get into the head” of the author of the source
text and produce a target text that reflects his/her intentions.
Read Taylor pp 117-121.
We cannot list the characteristics of literary texts because anything is
possible, but one tendency we can identify is the use of cataphoric
reference.
We have seen how journalistic texts use anaphora: all the key information
is given in the headline, lead and first paragraph. Subsequent paragraphs
refer back to information already given and provide further details.
Earnest Hemingway’s story The Snows of Kilimanjaro begins:
“The marvellous thing is that it’s painless,” he said.
We don’t know who he is or what it refers to. This is cataphora; the two
pronouns refer forward to information that will be revealed later.
Why do you think fiction writers use cataphora?
In what genres of literature do you think it is particularly important?
“The marvellous thing is that it’s painless,” he said. “That’s how you know when it
starts.”
“Is it really?”
“Absolutely. I’m awfully sorry about the odour, though. That must bother you.”
“Don’t! Please don’t.”
“Look at them,” he said. “Now is it sight or is it scent that brings them like that?”
The cot the man lay on was in the wide shade of a mimosa tree and as he looked out
past the shade on to the glare of the plain there were three of the big birds squatted
obscenely, while in the sky a dozen more sailed, making quick-moving shadows as
they passed.
They’ve been there since the truck broke down,” he said. “To-day the first time any
have lit on the ground. I watched the way they sailed very carefully at first in case I
wanted to use them in a story. That’s funny now.”
“I wish you wouldn’t,” she said.
“I’m only talking,” he said. “It’s much easier if I talk. But I don’t want to bother
you.”
n.b. Both shade and shadow translate as ombra. They are not exactly the same thing in
English.
“You know it doesn’t bother me,” she said. “It’s that I’ve gotten so very
nervous not being able to do anything. I think we might make it as easy as
we can until the plane comes.”
“Or until the plane doesn’t come.”
“Please tell me what I can do. There must be something I can do.”
“You can take the leg off and that might stop it, though I doubt it. Or you
can shoot me. You’re a good shot now. I taught you to shoot, didn’t I?”
What have you understood so far?
The title suggests that the man and the woman are in Africa (Mount
Kilimanjaro is in Tanzania). They are in the desert and their truck has
broken down. The man has a leg wound that is now affected with
gangrene (cancrena), which causes flesh to decompose (hence the smell)
but also eliminates the pain of the wound. He will die if he doesn’t get
treatment soon. The big birds are vultures (avvoltoi) who know they
might soon have a substantial meal. The unnamed couple have radioed
for help and they hope a small aircraft is on its way, but they cannot be
certain that it will arrive. The man suggests that the woman could either
cut off his leg or shoot him. She is clearly upset by his black humour.
Some Literary novels start slowly but in more popular fiction there
is a tendency to try to produce a begining that will attract and hold
the reader’s attention. Would you want to continue reading if a story
began like this?
My parents were little more than kids when they married: dad was
17, mum was 16 and I was just 14 months.
Literary writers break all the rules. The technical term is deviation; they
use forms that deviate from the norms of the language. Deviation is used in
advertising texts, usually for humorous effect, but in literature it often has a
more serious purpose. There are various types of deviation:
lexical
grammatical
discoursal
semantic
morphological
pragmatic
Graphological
In the following short texts, try to decide what kind of deviation is present.
In each case consider how the translator could produce an equivalent text.
p
1. Some go u and some go d
o
w
n
2. She lay in bed worryful and unasleep.
3. She met me, she fascinated me, she seduced me, and finally she husbanded me.
4. There is no altruism today; it has become altruwasm.
5. The multicoloured white light was dark and ominous.
6. Let’s begin at the beginning. I was born.
7. “Excuse me. Do you know where Prof. Greene’s office is?”
“Yes, I do.”
p
1. Some go u and some go d
o
w
n
GRAPHOLOGICAL DEVIATION
2. She lay in bed worryful and unasleep.
MORPHOLOGICAL DEVIATION
3. She met me, she fascinated me, she seduced me, and finally she husbanded me.
GRAMMATICAL DEVIATION
4. There is no altruism today; it has become altruwasm. LEXICAL DEVIATION
5. The multicoloured white light was dark and ominous. SEMANTIC DEVIATION
6. Let’s begin at the beginning. I was born.
DISCOURSAL DEVIATION
7. “Excuse me. Do you know where Prof. Greene’s office is?”
“Yes, I do.”
PRAGMATIC DEVIATION
The opening paragraphs from Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess
Burgess is best known as the author of A Clockwork Orange, which Stanley
Kubrick made into a controversial film, but his real masterpiece is Earthly Powers.
The octogenarian first-person narrator of the novel, Kenneth Toomey, is a
homosexual British novelist who is asked by the Vatican to write the story of a
miracle allegedly performed by the brother of his late brother-in-law, Don Carlo
Campanati and later Pope Gregory XVII. The novel is set in the late 1960s but the
elderly narrator describes events from his entire life span. Note that homosexuality
was legalized in England and Wales (not Scotland or Northern Ireland) only in
1967.
Consider the symbolism of the name Kenneth Toomey.
It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my
catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.
‘Very good, Ali,’ I quavered in Spanish through the closed door of the
master bedroom. ‘Take him into the bar. Give him a drink.’
‘Hay dos. Su capellán también.’
‘Very good, Ali. Give his chaplain a drink also.’
There is a word in the above lines that the great majority of native English
speakers do not know.
Do you think the average reader would want to carry on reading?
I retired twelve years ago from the profession of novelist. Nevertheless
you will be constrained to consider, if you know my work at all and take the
trouble now to reread that first sentence, that I have lost none of my old
cunning in the contrivance of what is known as an arresting opening. But
there is really nothing of contrivance about it. Actuality sometimes plays
into the hands of art. That I was eighty-one I could hardly doubt:
congratulatory cables had been rubbing it in all through the forenoon.
Geoffrey, who was already pulling on his over-tight summer slacks, was, I
supposed, my ganymede or male lover as well as my secretary. The Spanish
word arzobispo certainly means archbishop. The time was something after
four o’clock on a Maltese June day – the twenty-third to be exact and to
spare the truly interested the trouble of consulting Who’s Who.
This paragraph could be described as fictional truth. Why?
How would you describe the narrator’s prose?
Geoffrey sweated too much and was running to fat (why does one say
running? Geoffrey never ran). The living, I supposed, was too easy for a
boy of thirty-five. Well, the time for our separation could not, in the nature
of things, be much longer delayed. Geoffrey would not be pleased when he
attended the reading of my will. ‘The old bitch, my dear, and all I did for
him.’ I would do for him too, though posthumously, posthumously.
Line 3. Why is ragazzo not a good translation of boy?
Lines 5 and 6. There is discoursal deviation because we are given a
quotation but no mention of who uttered (or will utter) the words. How do
we know whose words they are?
FALSE FRIENDS 13
Conference: usually translated as convegno
Conferenza: usually translated as lecture
Conductor/Conduttore. As technical terms in the discipline of physics the two
words are identical in meaning but there are differences in non-scientific use:
A conductor is not a driver but un direttore d’orchestra.
Confidence. 1. Fiducia. I have confidence in her ability to do the job.
2. Fiducia in se stesso. Our goalkeeper has lost confidence after
making a couple of mistakes recently.
3. Confidenza. I’m telling this in confidence, so please don’t tell
anyone else. Confidential information = informazioni riservati
Confident = fiducioso, sicuro
Self-confident = Sicuro di sé
Confidente = 1. police informer 2. confidant(e) (literary, from French)
THE DIARY OF A BRAVE TRANSLATOR VERILY IN LEG – PART 13
One of my neighbours is a real gossip and I discovered recently that she has
been diffusing some ridiculous stories about me. I’m not letting it worry me
because people who know me won’t believe her. Anyway, as I always say,
who wounds with a sword perishes by the sword, so one day she will find out
what it is like to be the victim of malicious gossip. I had some consolation
this morning when I saw her putting the kids in the car to go to the beach.
Twenty minutes later it started raining basins. To be honest with you, I think
she has some psychological problems. In fact, other people have told me that
she lacks a Friday.
Fortunately, I don’t gossip like she does.
Spread (the verb diffuse is only used in technical texts)
Those who live by the sword will die by the sword.
It’s pouring (I haven’t heard a native English speaker say “it’s raining cats
and dogs” for at least forty years)
S/he’s got a screw loose. He’s one can short of a six-pack.