Time in literary translation: Anticipation of retrospection, temporality of reading and living

Abstract

Aiming at explicating structural prolepsis, and how temporality of reading and living are related, the study was conducted on Tell Me Your Dreams (1998) and its respective Amharic translation (Hilimishn Achawichgn-ህልምሽን አጫውችኝ, 2009).The English novel is anticipation of retrospection. The structural prolepsis propels the story without excursion. But the Amharic translation is not; there is no structural prolepsis. The present is constructed retrospectively and reveals that the best of times is yet to come in the English novel; the future has a retrospective significance of meaning to the present. There is a hermeneutic circle between the presentification of reading the English novel and the depresentification of real life present. The present of the English novel and the lived present of real life are experienced in preterite form in relation to a future to come. The future of real life and the English narrative are the same for both are unknown and imagined. The A and B philosophy of time solidified the literariness of the English narrative, but temporal becoming is emphasized in the Amharic translation. The past has just been, and so is not; the future is to be, and so is not yet. Thus, its literariness can’t be sensed.

Keywords

• a and b theories
• anticipation
• living
• prolepsis
• retrospection
• time
• translation