From doublevalent to monovalent discourse : the role of the translator in mediating heteroglossia and heteropsia in a fictional narrative

Abstract

Among the many unresolved issues in the field of translation studies is also the one pertaining to the question of who sees/speaks in the source and in the target text. To this effect, the paper explores, firstly, excerpts from James Joyce's Dubliners, in order to extrapolate the prevailing narrative strategies with respect to narrative perspective and their rendering in the Slovene translation. Secondly, the results obtained from the analysTs of the selected segments 1r6m both the source and target texts on the micro-structural level are compared with the effects that take place on the macro-structural level. The main objective, however, is to provide an adequate insight into those textual conditions that significantly govern the realisation of Bakhtin's notion of double-voiced discourse, particularly those which occur in a very limited stretch of language, sometimes even within a single phrase. The assumption is that such a narrative configuration is bound to present special difficulties for a translator of any text which includes a polyphony of voices and perspectives. Consequently, Bakhtin's postulation of heteroglossiais complemented with heteropsia, a medical term denoting unequal vision in the two eyes, which has been employed to signal a parallel perception of the object observed. Since these two rhetorical phenomena are most aptly realised by means of free indirect discourse, particular emphasis is placed on the variety of its function in a fictional narrative.